


Even The Snow in Siberia Melts Occasionally

by RegalMisfortune



Series: Gibraltar Shenanigans [7]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: A Mumble-Jumble Attempt At Science, A Roller Coaster of Emotions and Problems For Everyone, Backstory Development, Because That Sounds More Fitting Than Omnic Racism, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, Dreams and Nightmares, Everyone Has Issues But That's Okay, Meh, More characters to be added, No proofreading prior to posting I shall die in shame like I deserve, Not Canon In The Least Wooo, Ratings may change, This Work Became Mostly About Zarya's Backstory in the End, Worldbuilding?, Zarya-Centric, how to tag?, omnic prejudice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2018-11-18 02:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 29,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11281965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RegalMisfortune/pseuds/RegalMisfortune
Summary: Zarya is a soldier. She is bound to protect and serve, regardless of her orders.The not-so secretly reformed Overwatch is just a bigger picture than that of the Siberian warfront. There will be ups and downs in her reassignment to the team, but she's determined to get her footing and do what she must in order to protect the world at large, even if there are omnics functioning far too close for comfort than she'd care to admit.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I caved in and started a Zarya-centric chapter fic. Please bear with me as I flounder through this. Your comments are most appreciated; thank you!

The transport ship rattled as the winter winds buffeted its hull, the many piles of crates with Cyrillic letters painted into their sides creaking ominously, but refrained from toppling over.

It had been over 48 hours since Zarya had any decent sleep, pulled from the front lines of the bitter Siberian chill by request of Mrs. Volskaya herself. She may not be officially part of the Russian military, but Katya Volskaya was on league if not higher ranking than even generals as she provided the armies with capable mechs to combat the omnics- both in the previous war and in the new. Everyone in Russia held her in high regard, and Zarya was honored to be called upon by her personally- even if the meeting had been all but a handful of minutes.

By the time she arrived to St. Petersburg, the snow still clinging to the insulated linings of her standard Siberian winter uniform, her transport to her newest assignment was already in the city, almost filled to the brim with supplies provided by Volskaya herself. Yet a winter storm was brewing, and not even the Russians themselves tempted fate with such a catastrophic storm in their horizons. Zarya had barely even met the pilot of the ship- a chipper woman with what she could only assume to have a British accent who popped in with a “cheers love!” before she had disappeared to the helm of the ship. Volskaya only pressed a datapad into her hands, gave her a very short debrief of what was expected of her before having to climb onto the ship along with the boxes of supplies.

Zarya traced her gloved fingers over the datapad, letting the device rest on her knee as her other arm hooked around her particle cannon, keeping it steady as the ship hit some more turbulence.

_Overwatch,_ Zarya mused silently, the lower half of her face turning thoughtful as the upper half remained hidden behind the emotionless goggles and insulated hat that had its sides tugged snugly around her ears, effectively hiding her hair. When she had been much younger, Overwatch was in its prime, not that it had done any good for her small village in Siberia. The omnics took over it before any global defense force had been established, and by the time it collapsed Zarya was already a young adult striving through competitive sports. Overwatch _had_ done many things within Russia alongside the country’s own established Defense Force, and they brought hope to many around the world.

But Overwatch was illegal, and has been for a decade now. But Volskaya knew things no one else did, and if she said that Russia was to assist this unofficial reformation of the organization, so be it. In truth, being the one to be assigned as the figurehead of the entirety of Russia in the budding group filled Zarya with warm pride. Perhaps it did take her from the front lines of the Second Omnic Crisis in Siberia, but this was a chance to help protect the _entire world_.

_“Do what they tell you to do,”_ was all her orders were now, and Zarya wasn’t about to disappoint anyone- let alone Mrs. Volskaya. Her orders were clear as day, even if they had been brief.

The datapad held what would be important to her new team- her medical records, skillsets; an entire dossier that went beyond what was common knowledge. It would be vital for her new team to know if they had a doctor on their hands, in case she ever got hurt, and what her new commanding officer would require in order to know what to do with her.

She doubted that she’d get out of a medical examination, though. Doctors seemed to _like_ getting their hands all over new patients, poking and prodding and asking after blood samples. Zarya lived through it her entire weightlifting career whenever she had to go through physicals, and then again when she drafted herself into the military. What was another one?

Her lips tugged toward a hair as she let out a full-body sigh, taking the chance of being alone in the main hull to loosen her composure. She was _tired_ , and while she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and sleep she knew she had to remain awake. It would be indecent of her to just fall asleep within the first hours of her reassignment. There was still grease and blood caked and dried into the soles of her boots and on her armored knees, having not to time to freshen up or grab her things before she was whisked off to St. Petersburg and then onto this transport to… somewhere in Western Europe, she can only assume.

She decided to distract herself, her eyes trailing over the dozens of good-will crates, silently forming the words on her tongue and trying to translate it to English. She had to admit that her English was rusty, not having the need to even touch it since she finished her schooling. She felt that she knew enough to get her way around without too much trouble, but if the British woman from before had anything to go by, it was going to be the accents that caused her to trip.

She would endure it, though- she always did stand strong regardless of the adversary.

The crackle of her headset jerked Zarya out of her reprieve, a faint mumbling before a familiar British voice sounded in her ear.

“ _Hello? You there, love?”_

Was she talking to her directly, or trying to contact someone else? How on earth did she get her frequency was beyond her, but she guessed that it wouldn’t be too hard, given how Overwatch operated with top of the line technology prior to its collapse. Still, it was best to assume that she was talking to her, as there was no one else on the dropship.

“Zaryanova here,” she answered with firm politeness that her station required, uncertain of any other title she was to address the pilot by- especially in English.

“ _Oh! I got the right frequency then!”_ the voice bubbled, a smile lacing her words. “ _We didn’t have much time to introduce ourselves! I am Tracer- or Lena if you prefer! Do you like being called Zaryanova or do you have a nickname or callsign?”_

“Zarya is… amendable, ma’am”, she replied after a brief hesitance, her mind trying to piece together the rapid fire chatter. It had been what most of the Defense Force called her by, as there were three other Zaryanovas in her unit alone. While the others preferred being called by other names, more predominately by their first, Zarya preferred a shortened version of her surname. No one has called her “Aleksandra” in years.

“ _Oh, none of this ma’am stuff!”_ Tracer laughed, although as to why she found it humorous went beyond Zarya.

The next few hours was filled with consistent talk thanks to Tracer, who filled her in on the rest of the team. Their commander was a gorilla named Winston- Zarya vaguely remembered something of a sort in the news prior to Overwatch’s fall. There was a Korean MEKA pilot by the name of Hana Song- or D.Va apparently, who had been the newest member prior to Zarya herself. She was a famous gamer and quite popular in Korea and a celebrity around the world, but being in the middle of the Siberian Warfront for the last three years, Zarya was at a loss as to who exactly she was. She did recognize the names of Jesse McCree and Dr. Angela Ziegler, both of whom were part of the original Overwatch and appeared in the news from time to time afterwards. Dr. Ziegler was a near miracle worker, while McCree had a bounty on his head in multiple countries. Reinhardt Wilhelm was also a known name, mostly in part of the Russian’s love of the Crusaders in the first Omnic Conflict. There was something about massive armor and swinging hammers into omnic faceplates that was endearing to her people- much more satisfying than shooting them down, but also much more dangerous. The Shimadas were also known to her, but only by the whispers of her teammates. They had been part of an infamous family who ran a criminal empire for years in Japan, but apparently both the younger Genji Shimada and now the elder Hanzo Shimada had decided to break their ties at different times of their lives and joined in. Tracer said good thngs about Genji, but Zarya could hear her displeasure in her voice in regard to Hanzo. Why was uncertain, but it was not Zarya’s place to question it.

And then there was the omnics.

Omnics, as in multiple.

Zarya hadn’t noticed that Tracer had been even been speaking about omnics, talking on without taking a breath it seemed about some sort of monk that had come along with Genji. It had begun to tickle the back of her mind when the word “Shambali” arose- the context a little lost but vaguely familiar. But what made it all the more clearer was when the pilot began talking about “Bastion”, and it became very clear to her that she was referring to an actual Bastion Unit.

The Shambali were almost all omnic monks, she remembered with clarity. And now they also had a functioning Bastion Unit and treated it like it was part of their team? Zarya wanted to argue, to get angry, but what she really did was swallow down her pride and let Tracer continue on like she hadn’t just dumped the fact that there were omnics on the team to a Russian who still had oil and grease stained into her clothes from where she cut down several omnics in the Siberian warfront hours ago.

To every good thing there was a bad thing, and Zarya should’ve known that this high she had been floating on would eventually cause her to crash back to earth where she belonged. Surely Volskaya knew that this illegally reforming Overwatch had omnics in their ranks, but there had to be some sort of underlying plan that didn’t make her refuse outright. Perhaps it was the phrase of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, but no omnic was safe, even if they were some self-proposed peaceful monks or Bastion Unit with a newly discovered green thumb. What’s worse- Torbjörn, the famous Swedish engineer who had dismantled hundreds of omnics in the Crisis, was the one to bring the Bastion into Overwatch upon the recall.

Nothing made sense anymore, but it was not her place to understand. She was a loan, a soldier to be used as a weapon and protect her people and all people in this larger frame of focus outside of Siberia. So all her ill thoughts were stamped down and locked away, listening to Tracer prattle tirelessly on, stating that they would be reaching their destination within the next hour, but never specifying where and the sky outside the ship’s windows was inky black as night settled upon them sometime during the one-sided conversation.

Zarya, for her part, said little throughout it all, humming and murmuring single words of affirmative that yes she was still listening. Tracer spoke enough for the both of them, and she learned early on in her weightlifting career that asking questions only made practice ten times worse. Her trainer’s harsh personality only made it too easy for her to assimilate into the military lifestyle of not asking questions and doing what she was told. It made her strong- she needed to be strong.

Tracer finally ceased speaking when she had to contact their destination, leaving Zarya in some reprieve of trying to understand a third of the English while constantly scrambling to hear the following sentences. There was a dull throbbing pressure right behind her eyes, and Zarya wanted nothing more than to lift her goggles off her face and press the heels of her palms to them in attempt to smother the pain.  

She resisted the urge, instead focusing her gaze to the darkness outside, lights peeking out through the night. They must be getting close to their destination to be this low in altitude.

The flight ended when the dropship settled to a rest inside a hangar of some sort. Zarya stretched her legs out before rising to her feet as the dimly lit hull flickered to life as the lights powered on fully. A streak of blue caught her attention, darting between the crates from the helm. Tracer in person was a good head and a half shorter than Zarya was now that they had more than a brief moment to meet each other, her attire tight around her frame and the glow of her harness oddly eerie despite the bright cheer on her face.

“Ready to face the welcoming squad?” she asked with chipper, undaunted as she craned her neck to meet the emotionless glass of her goggles.

Zarya kept her expression smooth as she hefted the particle cannon to her shoulder, gazing down at the bubbly Brit for a breath.

“Ready as I ever will be.”


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing Zarya felt was the cool, humid air as the hatch to the dropship opened. The hangar was still open, letting in a breeze heavy with salt. It was significantly milder than the bitter chill of Siberia in the dead of winter, the humidity already causing her thick layers to stick to her skin.

The blue and orange blur of Tracer sped past her, down the ramp and towards a party standing in the hangar. The most noticeable was not the gorilla as she expected, but the bright scarlet of what looked like a blanket draped around the shoulders of a man with an equally bizarre hat. Said man whistled lowly as she descended from the dropship, particle cannon on her shoulder, his mouth moving to say something, but it was far too low for her to hear.

Whatever it was, it caused the young woman with a streak of pink still painted on her cheeks to elbow him in the ribs while the massive form of the gorilla- Winston she reminded herself- approached her with Tracer beside him.

“Lieutenant Zaryanova reporting for duty, sir.” Zarya decided to take a more standardized approach, not sure how to greet the new commander of Overwatch or a highly enhanced gorilla, standing tall as she gave him a salute with her free hand.

If a gorilla could blush, then it would look exactly what Winston was expressing at that moment, a large hand pushing up a pair of glasses up his nose as he cleared his throat.

“Winston is fine,” he answered, decidedly ignoring the snickers from the strange blanket-wearing man and the young Asian descent. Belatedly Zarya recognized Jesse McCree, looking scruffier around the edges than his wanted pictures depicted, and the girl had to be Hana Song. Who they were laughing at was uncertain, but Zarya decided to follow Winston’s lead and ignore them.

“Uh… at ease. Lena said that you prefer Zarya?”

“Yes sir,” she replied readily, standing more at parade rest and relieved that Winston spoke _much_ slower than Tracer. “I have my personal records on a datapad for your use, but I’m afraid I left it on the ship.” She should’ve took it with her, she mentally berated herself for her slip up. But neither Tracer nor Winston seemed to have noticed. In fact, Tracer smiled, slapping Zarya on the arm in good nature.

“We’ll just pick it up when we collect your things!” Tracer chimed. “We have to search everything on the ship, just in case!”

“It is a safety measure,” Winston tried to placate.

“I understand,” Zarya decided slowly, nodding her head in hopes that they would see that she was not offended. It made sense, having them search the supplies they were given. She wasn’t naïve enough to think that all of what was given to them was going to benevolent. There were always trackers, subtle bits of codes, remotely controlled devices, and while she doubted Volskaya would go through all this trouble just to bug their equipment, Overwatch’s plan of action was sound.

“However, all I have is this right here.” Zarya patted her particle cannon, missing the bewildered looks that Lena and the two others who came closer were giving her.

“Wait a sec- you just brought _a cannon_ with you?” That was the MEKA pilot, the young woman popping up beside Lena to stare up at the large Russian. There was a suspicious glint in her eye- not malicious but as if she was trying to peer at her face for clues. _She must recognize my surname_ , Zarya concluded. But with her signature hair, scar, and tattoo covered by the thick uniform, there was nothing the slight Korean could go by.

“I was immediately pulled from the warfront to go to St. Petersburg, then from there to here,” Zarya replied simply. “There was no time to collect my things.”

Hana was now peering suspiciously down at her legs and feet, caked with dried blood, dirt, and oil. So too was Tracer, who looked a bit guilty.

“If I had known that then I could’ve waited a day or two!”

“Russia’s storms wait for no one. My things can be sent for later,” Zarya did her best to console without stepping too far out of line.

She hadn’t noticed McCree slipping Hana’s phone from her back pocket, nor tapping away on its screen for a few scant seconds while they had been talking. What she did notice that another person joined them in the hangar after a few minutes, ducking to fit his massive frame through the smaller side door.

“Hello my friends! I heard that our new recruit is in need of some clothes!” the heavily German accent echoed through the hangar with good cheer, a bundle in his arms. He was a good head and shoulder taller than even she was, and broader around the shoulders, but in comparison to the others, he was most likely the only fit for her that wouldn’t be too small.

Zarya’s brain stalled for a bit, trying to catch up as Winston introduced her to Reinhardt, the ex-Crusader, and then belatedly introducing her to the others. She was glad that she at least got the other two correctly labeled, but having them offer her clothes was a bit too much. Then again, she has been wearing the same garments for over two days now, bordering on three if she was being truthful. She most likely smelled like blood, oil, and death.

“I… thank you,” she stumbled, looking awkwardly at the bundle offered out to her and then at her cannon, wondering if that too needed to be searched before she could bring it along.

“Oh! You can, uh, leave your weapon right here,” Winston replied, catching onto the internal dilemma. “We will have to scan it as well.”

Nodding, Zarya set the cannon onto the floor, rising up to take the bundle out of the smiling German’s arms.

Both Hana and Reinhardt seemed to have decided to show her around, leading her out of the hangar since “you can question her later- she needs a shower!” as Hana put it to Winston. Zarya had half expected the gorilla to reprimand her for mouthing off to a superior officer, but then again she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t. Winston had a mild personality, which most likely hid his true strength and rage. She could respect that, as well as respect Hana for butting in and letting her at least clean up first. It was slightly embarrassing meeting both old and new Overwatch members covered in grime.

There apparently was a communal showers just around the corner from the kitchen, rarely used since most stuck to the more private quarters which had their own bathrooms instead of the barracks. They were too far of a trek away, not when there were showers on the first floor. Hana had also been kind enough to slip away for several minutes to grab her some soap while Reinhardt bolstered about how wonderful it was to see someone of her caliber here on base. Zarya was lost on context with that statement, but got the general gist that Reinhardt appreciated her presence nevertheless.

Alone in the showers after the pair waved her on into them, both exclaiming to meet her in the kitchens once she was done, Zarya took the time to decompress and strip off the uniform that had become entirely too warm in the milder winters of whatever Mediterranean country she was in now.

The hat and goggles were pulled off at one piece, almost eagerly ripping it away from the mess of bright pink locks that stuck about in all angles with sweat. She took a brief glance in the mirror, her lips curling downward at the dark bruising around her eyes, looking as tired as she felt.

Piece by piece the remainder of her too-thick clothes were stripped away. The liquid soap she had been given smelled like strawberries, she found out, too tired to attempt to read the label. It was far better than sweat and warzone that she had grown used to.

It was only after she got out five minutes later, too used to the water rationing of the Siberan Front, that they had forgotten to give her a towel. It didn’t matter, the Russian making do with just putting the clothes on regardless- some sort of stretched out t-shirt and sweatpants that thankfully had drawstrings on them. The man’s legs may be longer than hers, but his waist was about the same thickness, or at least a size that didn’t make the hem drop to her knees, unlike the shirt. She had half a thought to tie it up so it at least didn’t drop unevenly over one shoulder, but Zarya didn’t have the energy to particularly care. She didn’t even bother to put her boots back on, deciding that her feet didn’t need to be stifled in the hot, soiled soles. Putting back on her undergarments were enough in the gross range as it was, but it wasn’t like Reinhardt would have a bra for her to use, as funny as that thought may be.

They would be lenient with her in their punishments for being so out of uniform, she reckoned, if they let a man with a blanket run around.   

It was with dripping hair and a carefully bundle of dirty clothes in one hand and boots in the other that Zarya exited the showers, following the murmuring of voices in the kitchen around the corner. It appeared that McCree and Tracer had joined Hana and Reinhardt in the kitchens, Tracer cooking up something on the stove as she chattered endlessly about the trip back. The first person to notice her hovering in the doorway was McCree, who was peering at her with thick brows furrowed in confusion. Hana’s gaze soon followed, and it took barely a second before her hands slapped against the table, chair screeching against the floor as she jumped to her feet.

“You’re Aleksandra Zaryanova! I _thought_ you sounded familiar!” she cried out, jutting a finger at the Russian as her face twisted that of smug awe.

“Oh! The weightlifter!” McCree snapped his fingers in realization as well. “Disappeared off the grid after dropping out of the competition. I remember that.”

“There was a war to be fought,” Zarya replied with a shrug, trying to hide the daze she felt at both of them staring at her like they just found a mountain of gold.

“Oh, let our new friend rest for one day without being badgered!” Reinhardt exclaimed as he pulled a chair out beside him and patted it in invitation. After a brief hesitation Zarya discarded her clothes just outside the door before joining the others at the table. Hana kept gawking at her- _she must’ve been a fan_ , Zarya thought, her eyes trailing to McCree who was equally watching her, although his expression was more observatory than awe-inspired ogling.

“Like what you see darlin’?” he drawled out, and Zarya blinked, realizing that she had been staring absently at him to where it was getting awkward.

“What of the blanket?” she blurted out, her accent thickening near the end as she mentally smacked herself upside the head. She wasn’t supposed to ask questions!

“Hey now, this here’s a serape. More useful than any ol’ blanket,” McCree stated, his tone defensive but not aggressively so. Teasingly, if the glint in his eyes and the upward twitch of his lips had anything to suggest.

“A… a… sur…hap?” Zarya struggled, brows scrunching together as she spectacularly fumbled with the foreign word in the dredges of her tired mind and tongue.

“Give her peace, Jesse,” Tracer chided, surprising Zarya as she placed a plate in front of her. Some sort of cooked beans, from the looks of it. “Eat up, love! Who knows when was the last time you ate if you had to forgo even your own belongings!”

Zarya didn’t say that it had been just as long as she was going without sleep, instead murmuring a soft thanks to her that she hoped was in English before she began to all but shovel the beans into her mouth.

“You certainly have an appetite!” Reinhardt laughed beside her, clapping her on the back with enough force to make her choke.

“Mmm,” was all she could muster out of her after the coughing fit, gratefully taking the glass of water that Hana had slid across the table for her.

“What are you all still doing up?” The new voice jolted as one to turn to the doorway, a woman with blonde hair tied back and a turtle-neck sweater hugging her frame. A frown was creasing her face, arms folded in disappointed disapproval.

“It is almost midnight, and while I know you waited to greet Lena, there is a time to draw the line- _and_ someone left their dirty laundry outside of the kitchen. You all know where the laundry facilities are.”

“They’re mine, ma’am,” Zarya interrupted gently, rising her to feet. The blonde woman blinked, as if just realizing that there was a new face amongst the others. The harsh lines of disapproval faded from the corners of her eyes.

“Oh! I’m sorry! I hadn’t realized they could be yours!” Her eyes drifted over Zarya’s current attire, a hint of amusement twitching at the edges of her mouth. “I am Dr. Angela Ziegler, or Mercy on the battlefield. It is a pleasure to meet you-?”

“Zaryanova- Zarya,” she supplied, stepping around the table to meet the other woman halfway, taking the offered hand. “My medical files are on a datapad in the dropship.”

“Well, at least someone came prepared,” Dr. Ziegler’s face softened even further, a smile now visibly present. “I will still need to examine you, but I believe that can wait until tomorrow.” She was visibly staring at the darkness under Zarya’s eyes- Zarya couldn’t help but let her shoulders droop.

“Слава Богу,”

“I have no clue what you just said, but I understand it completely,” Hana laughed, ignoring the sharp look from Dr. Ziegler, although it didn’t contain much heat.

“Has anyone shown you to your room yet?”

With that Zarya found herself trudging after Dr. Ziegler, breaking away from the kitchen under hails of goodnights, dirty clothes and footwear in hand.

“How long as it been since you last slept?” Dr. Ziegler waited until after they were out of earshot before inquiring, her lips pursed into a serious, concerned line.

“Two days ago, maybe more,” Zarya admitted, knowing that it was best not to lie to a doctor. They had this uncanny ability to sense them, she had quickly found out. The good doctor muttered something in German, tutting under her breath as she reached an unlabeled door. The panel blinked green before sliding open, revealing her new sleeping quarters.

“I will come get you at 10,” Dr. Ziegler informed her. “I can have someone show you around the base afterwards and introduce you to the rest of the team if you wish not to wander about on your own.”

“That is… kind,” Zarya nodded slowly. “Thank you, doctor.”

A smile crept onto Dr. Ziegler’s face once again as she bade Zarya her own farewell before heading off down the hallway.

As soon as she was out of sight, Zarya squandered herself into the room, the door clicking shut behind her. She leaned against it, finally giving in to pressing the heel of her palms to her eyes while discarding her dirty uniform onto the floor haphazardly. She would take care of it later once she knew where the laundering was to be done. But for now all she concerned herself with was getting her feet to move the meter or so to the bed and plopping face first into the slight dusty covers.

It didn’t even take her a minute to become entirely unaware of the world around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Слава Богу: Thank God.
> 
> Thank you for the comments so far! I'm glad you're enjoying the story. I hope that I can keep it going in the right direction!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the comments and kudos so far! I got busy for a few days but finally had time to sit down and write out a chapter. I will do my best to keep everyone from going completely OOC but sometimes things just get carried away from me. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter!

_Fresh snow crunched under her feet as she hobbled through the cold white. She couldn’t see out of the right eye, the entire side stiff and the taste of copper dribbling down over her lip. The back of her hand came back caked with half-dried flakes of red, yet she didn’t have the strength to try to scrape the rest of it away._

_Her breath clouded before her, the bitter cold in her lungs the only thing she could feel strongly as her exposed fingers and toes became numb, the iciness creeping its fingers up her legs as she sank halfway up to her knee in frozen powder._

_The sea of white expanded before her, not knowing where it ended and the grey horizon began. She wanted to sit down and rest awhile, but she knew she couldn’t. She had to keep going, to trudge onward. The next town was only a few kilometers away, she remembered from the times she visited. She had to get there in time, with not even a second to waste as she stumbled through the snow, her feet catching on buried brush and tangled grasses that she couldn’t see on her blind side. But she kept going, picking herself up from the snow with tears tickling the corner of her uncovered eye, pulling in all the determination and strength she had in her small body._

_She had to w-_

_“Agent-“_

Zarya took hold of the nearest object and threw it at the source of the sound in blind instinct, jerking upward in the same movement. The soft thump of the pillow hitting the wall before dropping to the floor drew her attention to it, the drowsiness fading in a snap as adrenaline rushed through her veins at the voice.

Except that there was no one in her room.

_“Agent Zaryanova, I apologize for the sudden awakening.”_

Zarya almost jerked violently to her feet if she had less control over her actions, her jaw clenched as she took in a sharp intake. After all, there was no point in getting physical when the speaker wasn’t in the room. It was distinctively female, whoever was speaking.

“Where,” she began, trying to word the sentence together through the haze of instinctive action. “Are you, exactly.” It was worded as a demand, not a question, Zarya wasn’t going to ask a bodiless voice nicely of anything, not after it woke her up.

_“I am present within every room of Watchpoint: Gibraltar, Agent Zaryanova,”_ the voice replied, cool and calm as water _. “I am Athena. I only awoke you to notify you that it is exactly 45 minutes to your appointment with Doctor Ziegler. I apologize if you wish not to be disturbed in the future.”_

Zarya pushed her legs so that they rested against the floor, propping her elbows onto her knees to press the heels of her palms to her eyes. The headache of last night was gone, but exhaustion clung to her mind and body nevertheless. And being woken up by some… voice in the walls… wasn’t helping.

“Are you...?” Zarya paused, lips working together as her brows scrunched downward. She couldn’t remember the word for it, but something about the way this Athena spoke made her believe that she… it… wasn’t actually a person.

_“I am an AI, if that is what you are referring to,”_ Athena supplied, confirming Zarya’s suspicions. She had met very few AIs, most only within the older Volskaya compounds. They were just as bad as omnics in her mind, just instead of having a body they infected entire buildings. Most were being decommissioned, and she doubted any existed outside of Volskaya Industries, where they served minimal tasks.

She wasn’t surprised that Overwatch had incorporated an AI into their base as well, perhaps in all their bases. With the constant flow of people, it was perhaps for the best that at least one constant remained. But it had been years since Overwatch had last been active, and while she didn’t know where Gibraltar even was outside of somewhere along the Mediterranean, she didn’t believe that an AI would still be effective after all this time.

Unless, of course, someone has been maintaining it, or it self-updated. _That_ was a scary thought.

“Wake me up an hour prior any set… engagements…” Zarya said after a moment, lowering her hands from her face. Curt but still polite was where she was going to have to tread. Despite her misgivings with AIs- and omnics- she didn’t need to give the others an excuse to send her back to Russia so soon after arriving, just because she wouldn’t play nice.

Her fear of failure outshone the fear and hate of omnics. And AIs.

_“Very well. I have made note to awaken you exactly one hour before predesignated engagements,”_ Athena replied as Zarya rose to her feet, twisting her arms and waist to crack her spine. _“There is a basket outside your door that contains some basic necessities and gifts from your fellow Agents.”_

Basic necessities? Curious, Zarya plodded over to the door, the metal sliding open to reveal just what the AI said: a basket with what she could visibly see as rolled up towels.

Picking it up, she let the door slide closed as she wandered towards the bed again, rifling through the neatly woven basket to examine its contents.

There were two massive, fluffy towels, neatly rolled up, a tube of toothpaste, spearmint flavored, a four-pack of multicolored toothbrushes with one missing, the bottle of strawberry soap that Hana had given her the night before, a first-aid kit, a small glass bottle that was unlabeled but as soon as she uncorked it, Zarya recognized the smell of whiskey coming off the amber liquid, two different boxes of tea, one written in English that proclaimed itself as Earl Grey, the other being scrawled out in something Asiain- perhaps kanji, but perhaps not. There was also a small twig at the bottom of the basket, which she pulled out to stare at with confusion.

_“That is Bastion’s contribution,”_ the AI voiced through the room. _“All present Agents gathered these items for you at Hana’s behest.”_

“That is…thoughtful,” Zarya murmured slowly, still eyeing the branch, although with much more apprehension than confusion. It seemed harmless, a normal branch, but being given anything from an omnic was trouble.

Still, she set it on the nightstand, making a mental note to dispose of it secretly.

Overall, the gifts _were_ thoughtful, even if haphazardly thrown together. They were useful- far better than anything given to her for sentimental value, which she appreciated.

She made use of half of the items given to her as she hoarded them away into the bathroom. The towels were absolutely divine, actually covering her entire frame instead of fractions like they normally did. The strawberry-scented soap removed the last of the grime that stubbornly clung to her, and she couldn’t even remember the last time her mouth tasted like something other than grit and fumes.

It made putting the same clothes she slept in back on a little harder, but she couldn’t be picky, not when she had nothing else to wear.

“Time,” she told the room as she finally eased out of the bathroom, hair damp and combed to the side with her fingers.

_“It is 15 to 1000 hours.”_

She had time to poke through the rest of her gifts, then, Zarya mused a she lifted the small liquor bottle from the basket. She didn’t drink very often, alcohol being counterproductive for her strength training and grinding through the front lines, but sometimes her dreams became too much to handle for one evening or the Siberian winters became too cold. Her comrades-in-arms occasionally smuggled some into their base, and she joined in for a drink or two, but there was no need for the socializing aspect when they returned back in body bags days later. She was cordial to them, but for her sake she kept them at arm’s length from knowing her personally. She couldn’t get attached.

 She set the bottle into the nightstand’s drawer so no one would see it, uncertain of Overwatch’s policies of alcohol consumption and there was no need in getting any visitors to think she needed it.

The Earl Grey tea was opened, a few bags missing from it already. A faint smile of amusement crept into the corners of her lips as she put it aside to peer at the other box of tea. She didn’t know much about teas, but she might get around to figuring out how to make some without ruining it. Both boxes went onto the nightstand beside the twig.

All that remained was the basket. It had a wicker quality to it, neatly woven together into a wide, bowl-like shape. It seemed a bit too nice to be manufactured- a sentiment that had her walking across the room to the narrow dresser by the bathroom door and setting it there. She would use it for something once her own supplies were shipped to her.

_“Agent Zaryanova, Dr. Ziegler is on her way.”_

“Zarya is fine,” she answered absently, distracted in kicking her dirty winter uniform into the bathroom and out of sight while bundling up the sheets from her bed to remake before the doctor arrived.

_“Acknowledged. I shall refer you as Zarya from now on.”_

Well, it was too late to take it back. Zarya wasn’t sure if she was comfortable in having anything outside of a living, breathing human calling her Zarya. She paused in her smoothing of the blankets as it suddenly dawned on her that her commander was technically a living, breathing, _talking gorilla,_ not a person. It was slightly unnerving still to have a creature genetically enhanced to talk and act like a human, but at least Winston wasn’t _programmed_ like the omnics or AIs were.

It was with this internal conflict that a knock came at the door, Zarya shaking her head clear of her uncertainties to open the door.

“Good morning, Zarya,” Dr. Ziegler smiled. She looked like she slept well, hair braided instead of simply pulled back and a lab coat over her shoulders. At least she looked better rested than Zarya felt.

“Good morning, doctor,” she replied, a small, genuine smile sneaking its way onto her lips. It was hard not to return the gesture when Dr. Ziegler had this air of kindness about her. An orderly kindness, but kindness nevertheless.

“Oh, just call me Angela,” Dr. Ziegler waved off, gesturing Zarya to follow as she headed down the hallway. “Did you sleep well?”

“Enough,” Zarya shrugged, keeping pace alongside the doctor as she turned her eyes around the hallways. Some of the room had signs on the doors- one had several pink rabbit-shaped stickers over the metal that immediately made her think of Hana. Guess she slept in the same wing as the young MEKA pilot did. “You seem well rested.”

“Ah, the wonders of a cup of coffee in the morning,” Angela sighed, although there was a strange twitch in the corners of her eyes and mouth that suggested humor. “Speaking of, have you eaten anything yet? I don’t think anyone has seen you in the kitchen this morning.”

Zarya kept herself from frowning, caught into admitting her little lie-in. She knew she should’ve been up earlier- back in Siberia she had to be up and ready by at least 0500 to exercise, then eat by 0600 and be in the field at 0700 at the earliest. But the jet lag and the amount of sleep or lack thereof she had prior to her arrival here had screwed up her sleep schedule. Surely there had to be some sort of schedule here as well.

“I slept late, ma’am.”

“Then you will just have to eat lunch with me, then.” There was no reprimand, no punishment. Just a smile and a gentle pat on the arm. Was Overwatch this lenient? “But you must have to eat breakfast tomorrow.”

There it was. It was conveyed more as a soft chiding than an order, but Zarya nodded solemnly regardless.

“I wish some of the others would be more like you,” Angela sighed, tucking a loose strand of hair that had escaped her braid behind an ear. “They always feel the need to argue that they know best of their health.”

They turned down a hallway Zarya didn’t recall seeing previously. It was here that Angela turned into a doorway, the metal sliding away before her. The smell of antiseptic hit her before she even took in the room itself, stepping into she knew immediately was a medical bay.

“Your medical files had been cleared by Athena and I took the time to look them over before coming to collect you,” Angela began, doctor voice already implemented. “They only extend back to twelve years, so I will have to ask you some questions regarding some of your immunizations.”

It was much like any other doctor’s visit, poked and prodded and giving answers the best she could with as few words as possible. No allergies. Broke a few ribs during her first year on the Siberian Front. No known hereditary medical concerns. Angela seemed to spend a second longer than necessary examining the cross-shaped scar on the right side of her temple and across her eye, only asking if there had been any lasting head trauma from the incident that resulted in the scar. Zarya was secretly relieved that the good doctor never asked _how_ she received it, and simply replied with a truthful “ _No”_.

Some of her shots had been out of date, but otherwise she was fit and healthy as she could be. Angela seemed content with her findings, jotting down a few notes in her own datapad before setting it aside and inquiring what she wanted for lunch.

“Anything will do,” Zarya replied, waiting for Angela to shuck off her lab coat and draped it neatly over a desk chair before leading the way through the unfamiliar hallways. “I am not picky.”

“That is good. We cook with whatever we get in supply runs, I’m afraid,” Angela replied. “We do compile lists of requests for items, but we cannot waste whatever we receive. We _are_ illegal, after all.”

Illegal, perhaps, but apparently necessary if both Russia and Korea would send each their finest to the organization. Perhaps they were aware of something that Zarya was not quite clear on.

All thought of food left Zarya’s mind as soon as she went to follow Angela into the kitchen, her feet halting in the doorway as she caught sight of what was in the room. Two omnics occupied the space, one with their back to the doorway as it stirred something in a pot on the stove, the other _floating_ beside the first casually peeling some sort of vegetable.

“Good morning Genji, Zenyatta,” Angela greeted, causing the omnic by the stove to turn. It was wearing _a human face_ , one riddled with scars and old wounds.

“Yo!” it replied, the corners of its eyes crinkling in delight.

“Greetings,” the floating omnic said as well, its voice strange to Zarya’s ears as it too turned its head to give Angela a nod in greeting, before turning around fully so its faceplate was pointed in Zarya’s direction. “Peace and blessings be upon you as well. I believe we have not met.”

“That’s right, you were both out when Zarya came,” Angela went on, smile and all, oblivious to the icy terror and confliction that surged through the Russian’s veins, rooting her to the spot. Didn’t she see that there were two _omnics_ , one of which was wearing a _human face_ and the other was honest-to-God _floating_? Didn’t she care?! Zarya knew that there would be at least two omnics around, but not three, and not like _this_. They were both just in the kitchen, one cooking as if it _needed_ sustenance, and Angela had just breezed into the room without so much of a flutter of her eyelashes.

Zarya missed whatever they said next, just standing rooted to the spot and staring like a statue in a Russian winter. Apparently she had been standing unresponsive for long enough for the smile on Angela’s face to fade away into concern.

“Z-?“

_“Agent Zarya, Winston is requesting your presence in the hangar.”_

Zarya could’ve blessed and praised Athena for her timing if she hadn’t been wrapped up in her own thoughts. She couldn’t even form words, her jaw locked and clenched so tightly that it was starting to ache.

Without a response to Athena or Angela’s concerned, interrupted question, Zarya stiffly turned heel and walked away from the kitchen in a tactical retreat.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter! I hope the characters aren't too out of character. Torbjörn was hard to write ;^;

Punching a wall hadn’t been on her list of things to do that day, but the encounter with the omnics in the kitchen had caused a surge of conflicting emotions that twisted into such frustration that only the pain in her knuckles ebbed it away as she risked a moment of peace in an empty hallway just around the corner from the hangar to collect herself.

Zarya was being stupid, she knew, glaring at the noticeable dent in the metal. She had lived through the end of the First Omnic Crisis, had been fighting in Russia’s Second Crisis, and between them was years of curdling, rotting fear and hatred that festered within the Russian people. Zarya herself had lost much to the robotic monstrosities, and it had become so deeply enrooted into her that just seeing the omnics wanted her to lash out, to inflict the same horror upon them as they had upon her.

But these omnics here were her comrades now, teammates. Teammates were supposed to stick together, rise above their enemies. She would protect her team to her dying breath if she must. Yet, how was she supposed to protect the very thing that she feared and despised? Just seeing the pair in the kitchen had caused her to feel conflicted, uncertain in her purpose.

Zarya was a soldier. A soldier was to follow orders, not question them. It didn’t matter what she felt as long as the job got done with minimal casualties.

She inhaled sharply through her nose, internally counting before letting the breath go. They were omnics, yes, but they were her teammates now. The others certainly cared for them, having been on base much longer than she. She would have to protect them on the field for the others’ sakes, but in the privacy of the base she would keep her distance. It was for the best- she couldn’t risk losing her nerve and temper in front of them and make the entire group think of her as weak and uncontrollable.

Stamping down the last of her erratic emotions down, Zarya smoothed her expression before leaving the empty hallway to complete her course to the hangar. The large room was mostly in part the same as it had been the night before, only with all the crates of supplies stacked on the floor and the hangar doors closed. Even her cannon was still in the same spot, the light dim in its center.

Winston and a small, stocky man with an impressive beard and a strange prosthetic for a right arm stood around it. They had been conversing to each other, although at the distance between them, Zarya couldn’t make out any of the words, and they ceased when they both caught sight of her approaching.

“Zarya,” Winston rumbled, something akin to a smile on his face. “I would like you to meet Torbjörn-“

“Oh great it’s another one,” the shorter man’s gruff, accented voice cut through Winston’s introduction, craning his neck to give Zarya a critical glare. “First the German, now you. Yer all damn giants. At least now I understand how the hell this ended up here.” He jutted his prosthetic at the particle cannon, the face under the beard twisting to something bordering impressed annoyance.

Zarya had to suppress a wry grin from creeping across her expression.

“Yes, well,” Winston cleared his throat, a large hand coming up to push his glasses further up his nose “There are other, er, factors, that I need to speak to you about, while Torbjörn finishes examining what he can of your weapon.”

Taking the cue, Zarya followed Winston a ways away from the dwarf and her particle cannon, letting him grumble and prod at the device. She wasn’t exactly comfortable in letting him tinker with it, but she was only being selfish about it. She remembered Torbjörn’s work well, and knew that her cannon was in good hands.

Once they were at a safe distance, Winston reached into a pocket, pulling out a familiar datapad.

“Did you take a look at your files before your arrival?” he asked, keeping his voice low, but there was a serious lilt to it that had Zarya instinctively slipping into attention.

“I did not, sir,” she replied with honestly, causing the gorilla to sigh.

“Well, the datapad was the only thing that had some… unsavory add-ons out of the entire shipment,” he explained to her. “Your medical files were able to be extracted, but everything else had to be quarantined by Athena and is too corrupted to be useful.”

Zarya’s control over her expression slipped a bit, her brows furrowing as she tried to piece together what Winston had been implying by the subtext before her eyes widened in realization.

“Sir-“ she began, but shut her mouth with an audible click of her teeth. There was no point in defending herself. It would only make things worse for her.

“Oh, don’t worry, I don’t expect that you knew, or had anything to do with it,” Winston was quick to catch on, which made her ease the tension in her shoulders a little. “We will just have to build a new profile from scratch. Athena is already working on it, but your input will also be valuable.”

Zarya mulled the words over in her head. “I understand, sir,” she decided on after a moment, nodding towards Winston in agreement.

The strange gorilla blush returned on Winston’s face, scratching at his cheek almost sheepishly.

“Winston is fine. No need to call me “sir”.”

That… almost seemed too informal to refer to a commanding officer their name, but she couldn’t disregard the order despite her thoughts of it. Still, she nodded her head in agreement, intoning a quiet “Of course,” while she was at it. She could be amendable, even if she personally didn’t like it. It was what he wanted, and who was she to argue against her current superior?

The private conversation appeared to be over as Winston moved to return to Torbjörn, Zarya trailing close behind. The diminutive man was sitting with arms folded, glaring at the cannon as if it had offended him in some way. Perhaps it had.

“This thing makes no sense,” he groused before Winston could even ask, gesturing his good arm out at the weapon. “This is a mounted device, with crude adaptations of hand holds for personal use. But this thing needs energy from somewhere, and I know for certain it comes from the vehicle they’re mounted on. But a hand-held? Bah, there wouldn’t be enough latent energy around it to make it effective in the least.”

Zarya had to take a moment to process the rapid, growling words, Torbjörn’s irritation lacing his voice heavier with his accent that made it almost too hard to piece the puzzle together while he continued to rant about it, pointing out flaws, grumbling about whatever impossibilities of theories Winston tried to come up with to support how the weapon that was vehicle-mounted could work at top performance as a personal device.

“All the pieces aren’t here,” Zarya’s voice cut through the pair’s squabbling. She froze for a moment as both heads snapped towards her, as if they had forgotten she had been there. Perhaps they had, not even considering the wielder of their current dilemma to know the missing pieces to how the cannon worked on its own.

She licked her lips as a bundle of nerves coiled in the pit of her stomach. Zarya knew how to explain this- had done so many times- but all the words were in Russian, and right now translations were eluding her as the pair waited for her to explain herself.

“There is… armor set,” Zarya began on slowly, working the words over her tongue in hopes that they made sense. “It… I become tank.”

As soon as the words left her lips- without the article “the” as she translated almost too literally in her head- Zarya wanted to bang her head against a wall. She sounded like a schoolgirl in primary just learning how to use English by reading random words off a page in the book and thinking herself an expert of the language. She could go on for hours listing the finer intricacies of the particle cannon, but there was no use if no one could understand her, and naturally as soon as she tried to convey her understanding into English, she forgot all concept and grasp of the language entirely.

Zarya made a mental note to work on her English so she wouldn’t sound entirely like an idiot.

Winston looked thoughtful nevertheless of her inarticulate explanation, a hum rumbling through his throat as he rubbed at his chin, eyes down on the cannon. Torbjörn, however, was irritated.

“How come it isn’t here, then, if it’s so damn important?” he snapped, his small form almost vibrating with agitation. “Why carry around only a part of a whole if it isn’t effective?!”

“Repairs,” Zarya tried, staring down the man as he glared up at her, undaunted by his mood. “It is effective enough.”

“Like hell it is,” Torbjörn grumbled, mumbling some other jabs under his breath that she caught wisps of. She bristled, but locked her jaw to keep herself quiet, letting the man stew and assume that he knew her. She wasn’t a “big lug” by any means- she wasn’t all muscle and no brain. It was just hard for her to convey what she knew, and Torbjörn didn’t seem to be in any mood to listen either.

“Well, we will just have to continue this examination when the rest of the parts come,” Winston voiced in, drowning out Torbjörn’s ire. At least the gorilla seemed content in her explanations, giving her a restrained pat on the back.

“That is all we needed you for now. Why don’t you go get some lunch?”

“Wait a minute, who’s going to help me get this thing to the workshop if she’s off eating?”

“Oh! Well, I suppose I can!”

Seeing the pure fury that crossed Torbjörn’s face when Winston lifted the particle cannon off the floor with ease was enough to break Zarya’s cold exterior, turning her back to hide a wide grin as she headed towards the door, Torbjörn’s cry of “You made me sit in the middle of the hangar for no damn reason on purpose?!” and Winston’s laughter carrying after her as she stepped into the hallway.

As soon as the voices drifted away, Zarya let her amusement drop, thoughts returning to the incident in the kitchen prior.

“Athena?” she started, her lips working together for a second as she tried to word her inquiry. “Is there… anyone in the kitchen?”

_“There are currently five Agents present. Shall I list them?”_

“No… no… that is… not needed.”

Deciding to avoid the kitchen entirely until it was empty, Zarya favored the chance to get a better grip of the layout of the base while most of the populace was preoccupied. She refound the medical wing, a weight room not too far from there that had some damaged equipment and some others that had seen better days but were still functional, a shooting range, several empty spaces that appeared to have once been offices, a larger space that contained a variety of miss-matched chairs that she could only assume to be a meeting room, and another wing of private quarters that only had two rooms labeled- one with several stickers of cacti that made her stifle a snort, the other fairly bland and containing a blank nametag, but the small sticker that Zarya recognized as Hana’s favorite rabbit motif signified that someone was at least living there. It was on the complete opposite end of the cactus-studded door, leaving the rest of the rooms in between empty.

Zarya also found a wide range of windows that faced out towards the sea and cliffsides, the landscape foreign to her and the waves calm despite the grey skies. She still wasn’t sure where this base was outside of Gibraltar, which she didn’t know where that was either, but it seemed far milder than any part of Russia. She loved it, the warmth of the humid, salty air as she risked a door that led into some sort of strange garden-eque area. She didn’t venture further into the green space, instead letting the door shut after a moment of fresh air to continue her explorations of the dusty winding hallways.

She didn’t know how long she spent wandering through the corridors, only realizing she somehow made it back towards the main common areas when her ears picked up the soft sound of voices. That, and when she turned a corner, someone marginally shorter rammed face first into her torso. An arm snapped out to catch the person before they had the chance of falling at the sudden change in momentum, steadying them on their feet.

“Oh! There you are!” Hana’s cheerful face smiled up at her, the pink streaks across her cheeks from the night before no longer present but the flesh tinting a soft hue nevertheless. “We were wondering where you were! You weren’t answering your communicator!”

“My… what?”

The walk had calmed her thoughts, allowing her to not slip into complete flummox and horror at missing something so vital. Was the communicator in her room and she somehow forgot to see it? Had it been in the gift basket?

“Winston forgot to give you one, didn’t he?” Hana didn’t seem all too fazed by it- even expectant of it. “No matter! You’ll get one eventually, but more pressing matters! Angie’s going to tie you to a chair and force food down your throat if you miss another meal and give you a lecture or something if she catches you, so you wanna hide in my room for a bit until Typhoon Angela blows over? I got instant noodles!”

Zarya felt a small frown crease her expression as she considered her options. On one hand, the thought of eating instant noodles made her want to pull a face, and she wasn’t feeling too sociable right now, especially at how energetic Hana seemed to be. On the other hand, she would have to face the wrath that was Dr. Ziegler. Her decision was all too clear.

“What kind of noodles do you have?”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been spoiling you all with semi-consistent updates. Please don't expect this all the time. c: 
> 
> Also thank you for the kind comments! I am trying my best to flesh out some backstory regarding some, if not many, of the characters because I don't think everything can be so peachy keen between them all, so I'm trying to make things... realistic? I don't know, but I'm trying! And I thought it'd be nice to see Zarya grow as a person over the course of a fic instead of being clear-cut. Since there isn't many Zarya-centric fics to begin with, I guess I will simply have to fill that in myself. 
> 
> There WILL be references and ideas taken from my own drabbles in this story. It is because I enjoy them a lot and it'd be nice to see them fleshed out as to what happens before and after. If I ever get to them. 
> 
> Thank you for the support, and enjoy!

As it turned out, Hana had quite a selection of instant noodles. There were also several other snacks wrapped in colorful packaging that had so many foreign symbols looped and blocked on the wrappings that it made Zarya’s head hurt just looking at it. She squinted at the back of one, trying to decipher the code enough to see if it was going to kill her just eating a single bite or not while Hana heated some water in an electric kettle.

“My family sends me care packages from home,” she explained while she had been filling up the kettle from the bathroom sink. “They don’t understand that we’re technically an awesome secret illegal organization, they just don’t want me becoming homesick or starve or something, so they won’t take “no” for an answer. Did the same thing when I first went into the military. Can’t be sent directly here but the nearest post office is kind enough to hold them until somebody can go out and collect them. I think the locals consider us to be some rambunctious local secret they all adopted and know to lie if anyone comes asking.”

Her room was entirely different from Zarya’s own. It was clear that she had been here long enough to redecorate the place in her own style, covering the walls with pictures and posters of games and people she didn’t recognize in the least, the bedspread switched out from the basic greys to soft pinks and purples. Or, that’s what she could pick out between the pile of plush toys of various shapes and sizes. It was hard to even consider that Hana had been the newest member of the team before herself, if Zarya recalled Lena’s ramblings on the flight to the base. How could she accumulate so much in such little time was beyond her, unless her family had a hand in providing some comforts.

“You can sit on the bed, you know,” Hana’s voice cut through Zarya’s observations, the package of instant noodles being plucked from her fingertips as the shorter woman prepared it for her. “It’s a mess but it’s comfy.”

Taking her cue, Zarya let herself settle onto the cot, the mattress sinking under her weight. It was much softer than hers was. Perhaps Hana had smuggled it from a different room, much like the desk that had a setup of all sorts of screens and consoles and piles of actual hard copies of several different games. Apparently Hana liked having physical copies, as outdated as it was.

A steaming cup entered her vision with a spoon already inside it, causing Zarya to blink before taking the object with careful fingers, a murmured thanks falling from her lips.

A comfortable silence settled then as Hana sat down at the desk, pulling up some strange game and controller in hand. Zarya sniffed at the contents of the cup, eyeing it suspiciously before risking a stir of the spoon and a careful taste. It was… salty. Incredibly salty. So much salt that she’d find less in the ocean water outside. She half feared her trainer from her weightlifting days would manifest inside the room from all the way in Russia and clobber her upside the head and make her do triple the number of laps for even thinking of eating something this obviously horrible, but her stomach instantly reminded her that she had nothing but those beans from the night before in a few days.

Beggars can’t be choosers, she reasoned, forcing another spoonful into her mouth.

“So,” Hana began, her eyes locked on the screen before her but it was clear she was speaking to the other occupant in the room, breaking the quiet outside of the background music and other noise coming from the headset that Hana had draped around her neck rather than over her ears. “Heard there was a bit of an incident in the kitchen earlier today. Angie was concerned.”

Zarya had to keep herself from accidentally inhaling her mouthful of salt and noodles, swallowing thickly before setting the spoon down. “News travels fast,” she murmured, causing a crack of a smile creep onto the part of Hana’s face that she could see.

“Well yeah. This place isn’t very big, and there isn’t many people. And when someone has beef with someone else then naturally everyone will know about it.”

The smile faded as the screen darkened to a pause menu, Hana setting down the controller in order to turn halfway around in her chair.

“It was Zenny, wasn’t it? The omnic?”

Zarya froze for a second, trying to piece together the puzzle of someone named “Zenny” and one of the two omnics in the kitchen.

“There were two,” Zarya tried to correct with a mumble, lowering her hand to rest the cup of noodles on her thigh.

“Genji is actually a cyborg.”

The word was entirely lost on Zarya, and her confusion but have been written on her face because Hana turned around completely to face her.

“You know, human with a lot of machine bits? Over half prosthetic? Has really cool glowing lights and ninja feet?”

“Oh.” The explanation was helpful, but Zarya still felt as conflicted as she had previously. A machine with a human face was… almost too much to even think about at the moment. There was a bad taste in her mouth that she couldn’t completely fault on the instant noodles as her eyes drifted to stare somewhere near the floor.

“The omnics… ruined much back home.”

Zarya lifted her eyes to look at Hana, the Korean fiddling with the controller absently in her lap while decidedly not looking at Zarya.

“I didn’t see much action in the short time I was recruited into the MEKA program, but, I’ve seen the damage they cause.” Her voice had picked up a melancholy tone to it, the wane smile not reaching her eyes. “My family used to live in the countryside. I’ve seen the pictures of the house they used to have, but… They’re safer now. Not happier, but safer, living in the city, all because of the omnics that destroyed much of what they used to have.”

A pregnant pause developed between them, the topic heavier than what Zarya thought would happen. She had known from Lena that Hana had been part of the MEKA program run by Korean’s military, but for her to open up so willingly about it was…

“How do you… work… knowing there are omnics here?” Zarya couldn’t help but ask, the question slipping from her tongue before she could stop herself.

“I got to know them!” Here Hana picked up, the solemn expression that looked wrong on her face morphed into a beaming smile. “It was hard at first, but I figured that if they are here, they are here to help! Omnics are like people, really. They have their own personalities and some are good, some are bad. I mean, there are plenty of humans that are plain old evil, but most of us are just trying to get by. It’s the same with omnics. It’s almost easy to forget that Zenny’s an omnic sometimes, and Bastion! Bastion’s a sweetheart. Its kind of unit wasn’t all too common in Korea, but they devastated Germany. Reinhardt had some problems when it first came here apparently, but Torbjörn brought it along and vouched for it, and Reinhardt’s a massive softy. They garden sometimes when the weather’s warmer.”

Omnics… were just like humans? Zarya let Hana’s chattering fall into the background as she pulled herself inward to contemplate that one phrase. Hana was too open, too optimistic, Zarya decided on, watching her carry on with animated gestures of her hands about some sort of story regarding one or more of the omnic teammates. She saw the aftermath of the carnage they wrought, yet while there was some sadness and hurt hidden in her small frame, Hana was still hopeful of a brighter future.

Zarya had been optimistic once too, long ago. But she learned that omnics, regardless of how nice they were before, only stabbed you in the back at the first given chance. When she closed her eyes, she could see the Siberian Front, the snow collecting upon the still metal of omnics and their war machines, the whiteness drifting to cover the bright splattering of blood and frozen corpses across the landscape. It shifted even further back, to where the cold took away the feelings in her uncovered fingers and toes, every breath of snow and smoke burning her lungs-

A hand touched her forearm, the warmth of the fingers almost scalding at its suddenness. Zarya jerked, the mostly empty cup of noodles dropping to the floor and spoon clattering away the last dredges of her memories. She cursed something dreadful in Russian, bending down to pick up the mess the same time Hana did.

“No, no, I got it,” Hana replied with another award-winning smile, using a towel from a pile off the floor to clean up the spilt broth. “I didn’t mean to startle you when you were so lost in thought.” There was a look about her eyes though that told Zarya that she wanted to ask further, but held her tongue. She must’ve noticed something was wrong, and Zarya scrambled to find some sort of excuse.

“I… haven’t had much sleep,” she admitted, her hands free to scrub at her face. It was truth enough- last night’s rest had been short, and the whirlwind of emotions that she had since waking was draining what little reserves of energy she had gained in the short reprieve.

“I was the same when I first came here! Jet lag’s a killer,” Hana went along luckily, tossing away the empty cup into a wastebin by the door. “You can take a nap in here if you want. We got plenty of time before someone decides to scrounge up dinner, and I promise not to swear _too_ much.”

Sleep was the last thing on Zarya’s mind, but once she settled down onto the bed surrounded by soft, plush toys and smoothing her fingers over the silky textures absently, sleep came to her quicker than she thought it would. It had to have been the comfortable bed, the scent of strawberries and salt, and the soft textures that did her in, but she didn’t have the chance to consider much of it as she dozed off, Hana’s back to her while her fingers tapped against the controller’s buttons.

A sound pulled her from the dreamless rest, her tired brain scrambling to put a source to the noise without opening her eyes when it came again, a soft knock on the door.

“’m coming,” Hana’s voice grumbled, a chair creaking and sighing as she rose to her feet. Zarya followed the movement with her ears, burying her face further into the soft texture she had in her arms- most likely some sort of giant plush animal that had been dominating the bed with the rest of the much smaller occupants.

“You missed dinner,” came a voice that Zarya didn’t recognize, low with an edge of gruffness that could be place with not being used very often.

“Ooh! I see you cooked today! Thanks!” There was a sound of fingers on plastic, and a cover coming up off a bowl.

“It’s almost midnight, Hana.” The voice was slightly exasperated, the words thickening slightly with an accent Zarya hadn’t caught before. Still… midnight? Zarya internally marveled and panicked at the same time at how long she had slept. She hadn’t been sure when she had fallen asleep, but it had been in the afternoon at least. Her sleep schedule was so horribly wrong now- she would have to correct it starting tomorrow. As well as getting back to her exercise regimen.

“Is it? Dammit. Now Zarya missed the quality food that you cooked too.” There must have been some confusion, as Hana laughed. “You know, new recruit? Big giant pink-haired Russian? Could deadlift a tank if she wanted to? Currently sleeping in here since afternoon like the dead? You would know if you hadn’t been sulking about.”

Zarya could almost hear the lips pressing into a thin line and the glare that the unknown man gave Hana.

“I know who she is,” came the retort. There was a pause, then- “Is she… alright?”

 He must’ve heard about what happened as well. The realization that this must be the elder Shimada slapped her hard with a block of ice and plunging it straight into her stomach. This was… Genji’s brother, she tried to piece together from Lena’s explanation yet again. She thought that he’d be upset with her for treating Genji so… possibly very horrible, but he didn’t seem angry just… understanding. Concerned, almost.

Maybe she was still sleeping and hallucinating all of this.

Hana sighed, the plastic bumping against a harder surface notifying Zarya that she set it down somewhere. “Yes and no.” She fell quiet for awhile, most likely trying to come up with some explanation. The prickle on the back of Zarya’s neck told her that someone or someones were looking over at her. “There is… a lot we don’t know.”

The quiet hiss of the door sliding close cut off the following murmuring of voices. Hana must’ve had stepped out to talk in order not to disturb her.

Zarya rolled onto her side, letting out a long, heavy sigh. Who knows what Hana was going to tell them. Zarya didn’t say much, but there was a lot to interpret and assume. It seemed that more than one person here had some problem with omnics in the past, so it wasn’t likely that they would send her back to Russia so soon because of it. But while the others had appeared to overcome their differences with that of their teammates, Zarya couldn’t help but feel that she was going to be rooted deep within her problem for much longer than they.

She couldn’t forget what the omnics had done to her, to her people, and she couldn’t forgive them for it either.

They were all liars in the end, Zarya summarized as she tried to get herself to go back to sleep again. Lying, murdering, backstabbing walking cans.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos, comments, and bookmarks, guys! I am doing my best! c: 
> 
> Reinhardt returns in this chapter! I just think he and Zarya could be really good friends, as well as Zarya and Hana. The dynamics are a little different between them, but I at least can work it out over time. 
> 
> Thank you and enjoy!

Zarya jerked awake with a sharp intake of breath, the figments of the nightmare she couldn’t remember other than its impression slipping from her grasp. She laid back down, pressing the heels of her palms to her eyes for a moment as she attempted to settle her frantic heart.

The room was still dark when she removed her hands, the windows covered by curtains but no light peeked through under the hems. The only source of light was the dim glow of the screen on the desk, half blocked by the slumped form of Hana who appeared to have fallen asleep mid-game, the screen depicting some sort of inventory of weapons and armor that appeared far too medieval for present day.

Rising from the mattress, Zarya softly plodded over to the desk, standing over Hana for a moment as she hesitated. Well, waking up in a computer chair certainly wasn’t a good start to any day, Zarya reasoned as she gently lifted the headset off from its skewed position on the small woman’s head. She set it down on the desk, slow in rotating the chair enough to curl an arm under Hana’s knees and around her shoulders before picking her up off from the chair and setting her down in the warm crevice that Zarya’s large body had left behind within the mound of blankets and plushies.

She looked much younger when she slept, Zarya noticed with a pause, her fingers still curled around the edge of the comforter after pulling it over Hana’s shoudlers. It was almost hard to believe that this girl was a member of the Korean military and had seen her fair share of battle prior to arriving at the Watchpoint. She was young and still very much full of hope for happiness and peace for _everyone_ \- Zarya found it amirable, regardless of her own opinion on the matter.

Zarya hoped that Hana’s bright optimism remained through it all, untouched and unwavered by the cruelty of war and truth. And she would do all she could to protect this part of her teammate for as long as she was breathing.

Lingering for far too long, even if it had only been for a minute, Zarya left Hana in peace as she forced her legs to move towards the door, the metal sliding quietly open. Her own room was just down the hallway, unmarked by any personal affects or surprise stickers.  The differences between her own room and Hana’s was stark and cold, and seeing the empty, sparse room made Zarya sigh softly.

“Time,” she murmured, hoping the AI would hear her as she ventured to the sink, sticking her head under the tap for a drink.

“It is currently 0400,” Athena’s voice sounded through the rush of water from the sink.

Zarya grunted, swallowing the mouthful of water before straightening up. It was four in the morning, and Zarya had been sleeping at least twelve hours. Half a day wasted, but she felt much better than she had before.

Better, and restless. She was starting to feel like her usual self again.

Zarya’s eyes drifted down to the mound of clothes that was her winter uniform, sighing at the mess. It made the bathroom reek of sweat and earth, but she didn’t know what else to do with it, and she couldn’t remember if she found the laundryroom or not during her adventures around the base.

Well, she’d take care of it later, she reasoned to herself, kicking the soiled clothing further into a tangled pile. Right now she had twelve hours of sleep and too much pent-up energy to even consider doing laundry.

Finding the weight room she saw the day before was easier than she expected, if using the medical wing as a waypoint. The kitchen light was on when she passed, but no one was present, and the medical wing itself had its doors shut, so she could only assume that most of the others were still sleeping.

The lights flickered on when Zarya stepped into the room, shedding light on the older models of equipment. After ten years of disuse, she was surprised that most of it was still in rather good shape, but she didn’t trust the ones with cables. Who knew how long it’s been since they last been serviced.  From the dust settling on those, she reasoned that whoever else used the place knew better than to trust them either.

Slipping back into her old warmups was as easy as slipping into water, the physical activity almost soothing and mindless. She knew not to push herself too hard, but enough to get her muscles to pleasantly ache at the returned use. Lighter weights, more reps. The quiet counting in her head helped- forward in Russian, backward in English, repeat the rep if she miscounted.

 _“You must train your mind as well as your body!”_ she could hear her trainer say, before smacking someone upside the head with his cane. He may have had a bad knee, but it didn’t stop him from being an effective coach. She could still feel the sharp bruising on her ankles from where he used to rap his cane against them to get them to shift their footing.  _“A bruise is nothing compared to a broken bone!”_ he would snap, banging the cane with righteous fury against the floor. _“A bone will get you terminated!”_

It was during vertical push-ups when the sound of something other than her breathing entered her ears, the soft hiss of the door sliding open. Zarya chose to ignore it, concentrating on the English names for numbers as she counted back down to one. Heavy footsteps entered the room, pausing somewhere outside of her view, but they at least didn’t interrupt her as she finally reached one, letting out a puff of air before letting her feet drop to the floor.

“Ah, to be young again,” the intruder sighed, words laced with his German accent. Zarya stretched her legs out as she sat on the mat, eyes turning up to look at Reinhardt. He was wearing sweats, the shirt clinging to his broad chest. His face had a rosy tinge to it, his breath slightly labored. He must’ve came back from running outside, Zarya concluded, supported by the stains of dirt on the soles of his shoes and dust clinging to his ankles.

“What? Can’t do a handstand, old man?” The tease left her mouth before she realized it, her lips curling into a familiar sly grin that she used to pull on her teammates when they had some downtime.

The man laughed regardless, a loud, boisterous boom that has the chains of a few equipment rattling in their confinement.

“Oho! I certainly could, back in my day! But I know not to test Fate Herself! Angela would have my hide!”

“Sounds like a back out if you ask me,” Zarya’s grin widened, unable to keep herself cold. “But I must not bully you into proving it. I’d hate to see you break your neck. Or your wrist. Bones become brittle with age, so I hear.”

It was almost _easy_ to joke with Reinhardt, her cheeks hurting from how much she was smiling, bantering back and forth in an old vs. young debate. His laugh was more contagious than any other she had heard in years, and it was difficult to hide her smiles with back turned or head bowed. She was sure that she wasn’t quick enough to hide it in several occasions, but Reinhardt never seemed to question her behavior when she would fall quiet to try to collect herself, only for him to tell a joke and she would lose all sense of calm. She was in a good mood- hell she _felt_ good, better than she had in awhile. It was nice- Reinhardt was easy to talk to when they dominated the weight room together without any other distractions or people. It almost made her forget that she had just been in the thick of blood and war just a few days prior, or that the enemy she had been facing were also dwelling under the same roof as she was.

And when Reinhardt invited her to join him on his morning runs, Zarya couldn’t help but instantly agree, her lips curling as she suggested that he only offered because he needed some motivation for being behind her in last place.

The color that Reinhardt’s face took on while he tried to correct himself only made Zarya lean against a wall and lose all sense of decorum as she howled with laughter.

“Now _that’s_ just cruel!” Reinhardt admonished, his face still tinted pink but amusement danced in his good eye and his smile soft as Zarya tried to remember how to breathe, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“I couldn’t help it!” Zarya lifted her head, blinking back the last of the mirthful tears from her eyes, her accent thickened by her amusement. “You set yourself up!”

Reinhardt let out a dramatic sigh, a hand splayed across his chest.

“I would _never_ suggest such a thing to any woman!” he retorted. “Even to a fine young woman such as yourself!”

“Now you’re just teasing,” Zarya shook her head, gently punching his shoulder- or tried to, if the wince had anything to go by. “I’m almost thirty.”

“Ah! But you’re only half my age, my dear! Young as I see it!”

Zarya went to retort, except all concept of language left her as her stomach made the loudest protest she had ever heard. Even Reinhardt seemed to be taken by surprise, but he recovered much quicker than she as he laughed and slapped her on the back hard enough to sting.

“Well then! Breakfast time it is!”

As it turned out, “breakfast time” was a quarter to eight, and “breakfast” turned out to be a ton of eggs and some sort of locally cured ham- “A treat from the locals!” Reinhardt had exclaimed when he spotted her sniffing at the hunk of meat in uncertain curiosity.

The kitchen was sparse in ways of variety of food. Eggs were typically cheap, and there were some local produce also littering the pantry and fridge, although most were running dry. Reinhardt made do with what was there, Zarya deciding to let the giant man do what he wished while she sipped at some water, although she questioned her resolve in the matter when the German made coffee that looked far more like congealed tar than ground beans and water. At least the eggs and ham turned out fine enough, and she was more than happy to shovel her plateful greedily into her mouth.

“Howdy Rein. Smells like you’ve been up for awhile.” The drawl from the door drew her attention from filling her glass with some more water as Reinhardt polished off his own plate of food, almost losing her grip on it when she caught sight of McCree.

McCree wasn’t wearing his usual get up. The hat remained, but the strange blanket- serape, she reminded herself- was absent. So were the spurs on his boots. He wore jeans with a few grease stains and tears in the knees and a flannel shirt. The belt was also missing, taking the obnoxious buckle with it. His revolver wasn’t around his waist, but she didn’t doubt for a second that he wasn’t armed. He looked... almost passably _normal_. It was unnerving.

“Jesse!” Reinhardt crowed, beaming at the younger man. “How was the supply run?”

Supply run? Zarya hadn’t known that there had been a supply run planned, but she didn’t ask, turning the tap off while McCree ventured over to the coffeemaker, stealing a mug to fill it up with the dreadful sludge.

“Well enough. The locals threw in some treats as well. We’ll haul the rest of it up here once the others pick out their own requests.” His eyes turned from the coffee to Zarya, the casual smile on his face seemed _wrong_ when aimed at her, that or it was the slight steel in his gaze that set it off.

“Your stuff’s here.”

Those three words immediately erased whatever confusion and unease Zarya felt at the look in McCree's eye. She could feel her own face brighten without her consent, missing the slight surprise from McCree as she set the glass down and made an immediate beeline towards the door.

There was a truck in the hangar when she entered, crates stacked up inside it. Tracer and Winston were already present, the British woman zipping about in organizing the crates in some form along the floor.

“ _Hello_!” she called out, slipping into her native tongue as she approached the vehicle with a slight spring in her step.

“Hey!” Tracer blurred to a stop, a smile on her face as she beamed up at Zarya. “Jesse must’ve given you the message without a problem since _someone_ forgot to give you a communicator.” She gave Winston a stink-eye, causing him to fluster a bit.

“I have it right here,” he rumbled, patting his pockets for a moment before plucking out an earpiece and what appeared to be a tablet.

“The, uh, communicator’s already set on the team channel. You can switch it for more private conversations if you wish,” Winston explained, setting the small piece into Zarya’s outstretch palm, his hands massive compared to her own that it made the communicator seem almost comical in his hold. “It is waterproof and shock-resistant, so please wear it as much as possible in case of emergencies. You may take it off while you sleep if you must, but please keep it close.”

Zarya turned the device over in her hand for a moment while Winston spoke, before taking the time to put it into her ear. So far the line was quiet, which was fine by her.

“This is for your personal use,” the gorilla continued, passing the tablet over to Zarya after she got the communicator settled into her ear. “You will get e-mails and notifications that are not pressing matters with this, as well as attain access to files and reports. It cannot leave the building, and all activity is monitored by Athena.”

So the AI was going to be spying on her some more. Zarya wasn’t exactly surprised, but she wasn’t pleased either. Still, she murmured her thanks and understanding, tucking the device into her own pocket for safekeeping. It was with luck that her borrowed sweats had such large pockets- she half considered not returning them.

“I heard my things were here…” she began, slightly uncertain, but relaxed when Winston smiled.

“Ah yes! Several things, in fact,” he waved to her to follow, walking over towards a pair of crates.

Zarya instantly recognized the Cyrillic writing on the sides, and then further still of what was contained inside. The tops had been pried off, the wood slightly splintered, but she could see the all-familiar pale blue and chipped chrome of her armor.

“It’s not as big as I thought it would be,” Tracer popped up alongside them as they peered inside the crate. “I was thinking something as big as Reinhardt’s with that cannon of yours!”

“It does what it needs to do,” Zarya replied simply, reaching down to give the chest plate a gentle pat. She would need to take a closer look once Torbjorn and Winston finished prying through it. She knew that they, as well as the mechanics who fixed it, knew their job well, but that didn’t help the fact that she always felt that something was off with the armor until she got her own fingers poking and prodding at it. The gloves were especially touchy, never seeming right when anyone else but her tinkered with them.

Perhaps it was builder’s bias.

Giving the blue armor a final pat, Zarya turned to the second crate. This one was much smaller, containing nothing more than a duffel bag stuffed to capacity.

“What’s in that?” Tracer popped into view, half-leaning into the crate to peer at its contents.

“Clothes, I hope,” Zarya answered, kneeling down to unzip the duffel a fraction to peek inside. There were indeed clothes inside, plus familiar bottles of dyes and nail polish that had her zipping up the bag and hoisting it up into both her arms, hugging it close to her chest as she turned right around and all but hurried towards the door with growing excitement, not noticing a second case that had been underneath the bulk of the bag.

“Wait! You forgot your-“

Zarya didn’t stop, didn’t turn around or acknowledge Tracer’s cry, or even Winston’s as he tried to catch her attention, her feet carrying her as fast as she could without running through the base back to her room.

She had clean clothes to put on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S.: I have a tumblr under the same username if anyone has questions or simply interested in random other things. c:
> 
> I will also be editing some tags so they're a bit more coherent, so if there is anything you want to see tagged, please let me know! This also goes for any future chapters this at any time. Thank you!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the kind comments and kudos thus far! I appreciate all the support you have been giving me! c:
> 
> This chapter is leading to something I have already written about. I'm sure once you've read the chapter you will know exactly which short I'm referring to (or not if you haven't read any of my other works in this series, and that's okay)! Which means you may already know what the next chapter will be about, but don't worry! Although the style may be slightly different and scenes changed, the main context will remain the same. 
> 
> This chapter itself may be a bit disjointed, and I apologize! I have started another project for reasons (i.e: I am a complete and utter fool), so chapter postings may slow down. I will try to keep the quality and content of the chapters at the same standards I have been trying to keep them on. If things start getting too wonky, please let me know! 
> 
> Enjoy!

A week had passed since Zarya’s reassignment to Overwatch, and the Russian had been very successful in mostly keeping everyone at arm’s length.

Hana and Reinhardt were the only two who actively sought her out- Reinhardt a welcoming workout partner in the early morning twilight, Hana a constant visitor who would happily bounce into her room unannounced and drag Zarya over to her own room to play games, which was more of Zarya watching Hana play games while she inadvertently dozed off on the mound of comforters and plushies.

Zarya never could admit out loud that she’s never slept better on anything else.

Apart from those two, Zarya mastered avoiding most of the other team members. It helped considerably that Tracer was usually out on reconnaissance, Torbjörn left every weekend to go back home to his family (to say that Zarya had been surprised to hear that the sour man had a family- with a wife and children no less- was an understatement), and the eldest Shimada hid from everyone, not just Zarya.

Hana was one of the few connecting forces between everyone, often going to drag someone out of their room or from the training grounds to help her play a game or simply to talk to. The only other time anyone willingly met together was during mealtimes, which there seemed to be some sort of unwritten rotation of who was cooking for the day. Zarya wasn’t sure if she was a part of that arrangement, but since no one has said anything about it to her, she did nothing more than cook three families’ worth of soup once late one night after a particularly bad case of nightmares.

Considering how most of it was gone when she finally dragged herself out of her room the following evening after skipping the usual morning’s exercise with Reinhardt with a typed message that she couldn’t be sure if she had used the English keypad option or the Cyrillic one, she concluded that it had been a moderate success.

Zarya was reluctant to admit that she had also been using Athena to help navigate around most of everyone else. The AI always had an inflection that bordered disappointment whenever Zarya inquired after everyone’s locations when she grew hungry and had to put her tablet down after struggling through the tenth article written in English that day, but Zarya wasn’t going to let some program dictate her actions, even if it did assist her in translations.

With Athena’s assistance, Zarya had been successful in avoiding the others in part. She occasionally bumped into one in the hallways or when she was leaving the kitchen, but McCree did nothing more than tip his head in her direction and Angela always looked as if she had something to say but caught herself with a shake of a head and a polite greeting in Zarya’s direction. Zarya always returned with a “good morning”, or any other time of day it may be, and refused to be the one to start the small talk while heading back to hiding in peace.

The omnics and cyborg were nowhere in sight, much to her relief.

The weekend had been a bit of a blessing, she had found out. With Torbjörn absent, Zarya was able to wander down to the esteemed workshop for the first time on a sleepless Saturday.

It was almost as large as the hangar, full of tables and tools and half-built turrets. It had an air of having once been very lively, filled to the rafters with ringing metal and conversations. Now, however, most of the tables were left to collect dust and unnecessary tools, and her footsteps echoed against the metal walls as she navigated around the space.

It was in here where she finally relocated her armor and particle cannon, the cannon resting on a table all on its own, the light casting a dim violet glow in the surrounding shadows. Her armor was laid out on another table, signs of it being looked at visible on the additional metal scratches on its casings.

Zarya had spent most of that night intrusively examining the work the short engineer had done to her equipment, silently pleased of the results, although she had to carefully pick through the table of tools to find the right pieces to tinker with her gloves.

Then again, her gloves never felt right whenever anyone else but her decided to try to fix them. There wasn’t much to change with them, fortunately, and Zarya couldn’t help but be impressed that so far Torbjörn was the only person who could fiddle with her gloves and not have her come back to completely redo the work herself.

Perhaps there was some hope for the diminutive man after all.

Zarya’s semi-seclusion came to an abrupt end as Monday rolled around, Winston’s voice calling in her ear about a meeting happening in ten minutes involving all agents.

Zarya almost ripped the earpiece out and had all intentions of throwing it had hard as she could against the wall, but caught herself with her hand to her ear only because she wanted to avoid the entire conversation of asking for another one. She still grumbled a curse or two in the shower before dressing and heading towards where she remembered a conference room being at. Bumping into a yawing Hana only confirmed that she was heading in the right place.

McCree was already dressed in the familiar red serape, hat low over his face and feet propped on another chair. The om-no, _cyborg,_ was sitting a few chairs down, head tilt in the direction of the actual omnic who wasn’t floating but sitting with legs crossed beside the cyborg. Torbjörn was present, looking tired but in a visible better mood than he had been when Zarya had met him, although the only difference was that his face wasn’t as harshly scrunched together as it could have been.

Hana plopped down in a chair beside a long-haired man that Zarya didn’t recognize, the black strands streaked with visible grey and toned arms folded over his chest. A massive tattoo consumed the entirety of one arm, the details of the dragon’s scales catching Zarya’s eye even at this distance. It was very impressive and beautiful, but Zarya wasn’t going to approach closer. She avoided eye-contact with the man and simply sat down in the nearest empty chair, leaving enough space between everyone else as Angela bustled in with coffee in hand, followed closely by Reinhardt and a streak of blue and orange that could only belong to Tracer.

There was no sign of the second omnic, Zarya noted with some clarity, only for a soft chirp beside her caused her heart to lodge into her throat.

Very slowly, she turned her head enough to look to her left, tilting her chin to angle her face skyward. Beyond the swath of rust and chipping paint was the blue glow of the ocular glass of a Bastion Unit. There was a bit off moss and twigs still clinging to its frame, and it tilted its head in her direction with a series of soft beeps.

And then it tipped backwards, landing with a loud thump onto the floor beside her chair that almost jolted her out of her seat and onto her feet if her fingers hadn’t been clutching the sides of her chair with whitened knuckles.

Zarya was sure she heard a stifled snort from somewhere near the front of the room.

She wished she could pay attention to whatever Winston was saying as the gorilla cleared his throat and began to talk, but there was no way in hell that she could with the omnic sitting beside her. It didn’t seem to be paying any attention either, as its square head was pointed towards her direction. The glass would turn up, then down at her fingers, then back up, but made no other noise other than the mechanical whirring of running processors.

_It was looking at her fingernails and hair_ , Zarya realized suddenly as its head drifted down again towards her hand that was still clinging to the chair. She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as she forced herself to unfurl her fingers, exposing more of the vibrant pink of the nail polish she had recently redone. She watched the optics shift under the glass pane, narrowing in focus as it fixated onto the bright color.

“Zarya-“

Zarya’s head jerked up at the mention of her name, blinking as she came to the sudden understanding that she was in a debriefing and she had missed almost the entirety of it. Winston appeared to be forming a team, consisting on herself, McCree, Genji, Zenyatta, Hana, and Tracer. Angela would also be coming, but she would be remaining on the drop ship as back-up just in case things went sour, and Tracer would be piloting.

Her first mission, and she would be working with both the omnic and the cyborg. Great.

A cool, metallic nudge against her hand caused Zarya to jerk, pulling it up out of the Bastion’s curious prodding. Whatever anger that flared inside her chest at the touch smoldered as it let out what Zarya could only describe as a sad whistle, hand drooping for a moment before it moved again. It plucked a feather off its opposite shoulder, the plumage a bright yellowy-green, and it held it up to her with a series of chirps.

The conference room had gotten very quiet, Zarya noticed, and sweltering as sweat tickled the back of her neck. She forced herself not to look up, knowing that she would only see everyone else watching the interaction between herself and the omnic that had planted itself by her side, waiting with baited breath of her response.

Zarya could feel her lips thin, ignoring the fact that her fingers were shaking a little as she lifted a hand up and gingerly took the feather from the omnic’s grasp as if it was a ticking bomb waiting to go off. The omnic whirred and made an odd sort of hiccup, and then the chair scraped loudly against the floor as Zarya jumped to her feet and all but fled from the room, the feather clutched in her trembling hand.

Zarya would never admit that she spent the time before her departure to her first mission with her head between her knees in the quiet shelter of her room.

She was the one of the first to the hangar when the departure time crept close, armor on and cannon on her shoulder, her expression smooth and emotions recollected and firmly packed away. Tracer and Winston were already there running safety checks on the ship, and Tracer whistled as Zarya approached.

“Damn, you look cool,” the Brit replied, zipping from her position underneath the ship to Zarya’s side, giving her a look over. “The color suits you. And here I thought you were going to look weird without sleeves.”

“It limits movement,” Zarya replied, quirking an eyebrow as Tracer prodded at the beginnings of the tattoo on her elbow. “And it is hot.”

Zarya had meant that literally, but from Tracer’s raucous laughter, she had taken her words in a different direction. Still, the Russian wasn’t going to correct the misunderstanding as she let herself onto the drop ship, cannon by her feet as she sat down and waited for the others to arrive by fiddling with the armband of her gauntlet.

A flicker of red in the corner of her vision caused Zarya to pause and lift her eyes in time to see McCree settle in the seat opposite her, giving her a look shadowed by the brim of his hat as his spurs jingled. She gave him a quiet nod before going back to working on her gloves, letting him be for now.

Hana was the next to arrive, dragging her feet as she yawned, her pale blue-purple uniform causing the pink stripes on her cheeks to stand out more prominently in harmony with the tints of pink along her legs. She plopped in the seat beside McCree, head already dropping to his shoulder. He let out a small huff of a laugh, shifting so that she was more comfortable but otherwise made no protest of the younger member’s actions.

Zarya let herself sink back into tinkering with the other glove, checking the internal wiring with a critical eye when a shadow drifted past her and settled down in the seat directly beside her. She lifted her head, freezing mid-action when her eyes caught sight of brightly polished chrome.

Genji sat to her left, calm and quiet as the ninja he had been trained to become. Zarya risked looking to her right, and dread pooled in her stomach when she took in the familiar shape of the floating omnic resting peacefully in the seat directly beside her.

In the corner of her eye, Zarya could see the broadening grin on McCree’s face, enjoying the internal panic Zarya found herself in far too much for her liking.

She ground her teeth, her posture stiff as she forced herself to go back to looking over her gauntlets while Tracer’s and Angela’s voices traveled up the ramp, only glancing up in their direction when they came on board.

Tracer was dressed in the usual jumpsuit, but Angela in her Caduceus regalia looked like an actual _angel_. It was no wonder they called her Mercy on the battle field. Zarya couldn’t help but watch the woman all but float by, going towards the back of the ship to check up on the emergency equipment just in case.

But then Zarya remembered the omnic and the cyborg sitting beside her and she snapped her head back down to her gloves as the engines rumbled to life under her feet, teeth gritting as she snapped her gauntlet closed.

There was some talk between the others, mostly in part of Genji and McCree, their voices quiet in order to let the softly snoring Hana rest. The omnic beside her remained quiet, and Zarya was fine with that as her idle fingers began to tap against the metal plating of her thigh, drumming the rhythm of an old rock song she couldn’t remember the name of.

The cyborg’s face turned away from McCree, the green glow from the visor casting an eerie light on Zarya as he said something lowly in a foreign tongue to the omnic on her other side. The omnic tilted its head, almost in a disapproving look as Genji huffed, saying something else with a slight gesture of his hand.

Zarya had the impression that he was talking about her.

_“Avenger.”_

Zarya paused in her tapping as the omnic spoke beside her, the mechanical voice sounding strange to her ears as it spoke in her native tongue. Its head was tilted towards the cannon that rested by her feet, observing the Cyrillic painted on its side. It was an obvious play against Genji, Zarya realized, that the omnic would speak in in her native tongue to show that it was rude of the cyborg to talk in his own native tongue around her.

_“It is appropriate,”_ Zarya responded back, her tone curt. Perhaps she shouldn’t indulge the omnic in this obvious play to the cyborg, but she was stressed, squashed between the two of them, and helping one reprimand the other was the only source of action she could do _against_ either of them.

She took a deep breath to clear her straying thoughts as she went back to drumming against her thigh.

_“What are you avenging?”_ The drumming stopped yet again at the sudden question, Zarya taking her gaze off the unfocused staring at the floor or wall and actually looking at the omnic. There were nine pinpoints of light on its head, she realized, the blue much softer and warmer than the eerie, dangerous light of the cyborg’s visor. It was facing her, its tone soft, but not condensing. Curious. Honest. 

Zarya felt herself pull a face and turn away, continuing to drum on her thigh with much more vigor and decidedly ignoring the question, done amusing the omnic. There were far too many things that she was avenging that the omnic couldn’t even understand. She wasn’t about to tell it anything about it, nor was she going to tell any human or talking gorilla either. Her reasons were her own, and she was going to keep it as such.

“Looks like someone’s nervous,” McCree drawled, kicking his legs out as he sprawled out in his seat, eyes glinting slightly under the brim of his hat as he watched her drum.

“The first mission is always nerve-wracking,” the cyborg’s voice jarred in her ear. “You will do fine.”

“I am not nervous,” Zarya stated, her teeth grinding to keep herself from growling. “I am building…” She paused, trying to translate the word “momentum” into English and failing. She knew her armor was built from the remnants of the vehicle the cannon had been stored on, the energy of the mechanical movement of the vehicle fueling the cannon’s power. It absorbed energy from wherever it could get, and incorporating herself as the vehicle meant that a lot of movement and energy she used and the armor absorbed went for the use to power the cannon. But translating all that knowledge into English was difficult, and Zarya would rather keep the explanation as short as possible.

“Power,” she settled on, causing McCree to snort.

“Looks like nerves to me. You’re jittier than Lena with coffee.”

Zarya’s fingers stopped yet again, her face as smooth and cold as ice as she lifted her eyes up to stare McCree in the face. She placed her hand flat against the metal plating of her thigh slowly, eyes never leaving McCree’s face as she struck the palm of her gauntlet down the length of her thigh.

Like a match being struck, light and sparks crackled into life in a bright flash of showering violet. The circular panes of glass on her armor flickered to life and shone with the bright light as the cannon by her feet _hummed_ , the glow in its center flaring like a fire being stroked.

It lasted in that one instant, the light fading as soon as her hand slid off her knee in the action and the sparks disappearing harmlessly on the floor, but the look on McCree’s face was worth it as he stared, mouth slightly ajar.

“Power,” she replied again, this time her tone more smug as her fingers went back to drumming on her thigh.

No one else questioned the action for the rest of the trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Context on the Zenyatta/Zarya conversation: Zarya's particle cannon has Мститель written on the side. According to what I've read, it translates to "Avenger". I've included it in the story because it fits given current circumstances. 
> 
> As for Zarya's armor- the only thing I can find regarding how it works is that Zarya's gloves amplifies and conducts the energy the particle cannon uses. I took creative liberty and the briefest of scientific thought to do whatever I want with it outside of that. c;


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for all the nice comments and kudos! God, I love you all. Your support means so much to me!
> 
> I know I've slowed down in how frequent I write chapters for this fic, but I will try to be semi-consistent! At least once a week! Please be patient with me if I sort of disappear- I'm a bit of a scrub when it comes to actually finishing things. ;^;
> 
> I have a [tumblr](http://regalmisfortune.tumblr.com/) in case you want to come and poke me! This is my personal/fandom/oc dumping ground blog, so things can get a bit hectic there. Feel free to lurk! c: 
> 
> This chapter is a bit of a rewrite of my drabble "Unlikely Duo". It has the same theme to it, but some of the scenario is rewritten.
> 
> THIS CHAPTER DOES HAVE SOME PEOPLE DYING. Not main characters, but... not really graphic but graphic enough if you got a vivid imagination I guess?? Just be warned that it's there. Also explosions. 
> 
> Thank you and enjoy!

It was far too quiet.

The location of their mission was a massive facility long since abandoned- or should have been abandoned. From what Zarya could gather from the others as they murmured between themselves was that there had been some sightings of activity near and inside the building- suspicious considering the amount of violence that had skyrocketed in the surrounding areas since the reports began.

Yet when they had snuck into the building, there was not a single soul in sight. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as her instincts put her on the defense, trying to keep her footsteps quiet as she navigated through the upper halls as the others dispersed to explore the work floor and lower offices, some in pairs, some on their own.

“There’s signs of life in the old machinery,” McCree noted over the communicator in a low drawl, his tone tense enough that Zarya could see his hand on his revolver despite not even knowing his location. “Still warm.”

“The generator’s still on too,” Tracer’s voice murmured in Zarya’s ear next. “It’s as if-“

A soft sound caught Zarya’s attention, her instincts telling her to turn around right then and there.

 “-they all just-“

Zarya spun around, the particle cannon humming under her fingers as she aimed it towards the other end of the hallway, the light glinting off her eyes as unfamiliar shadows turned the corner.

 “-up and left.”

Pandemonium happened right as Tracer finished her sentence. Zarya lobbed a volley into the corridor at the shadows, the explosion of heated particles and screams of dying and startled enemies pairing with the sound of gunfire and shouts in her ear through her communicator before it all cut out suddenly.  

Zarya switched from volley to beam as she charged forward, a roar on her lips as the beam cut through the walls and flesh in a sweep, ramming the butt of the cannon hard against an unfortunate attacker’s head, the audible crack drowned out by the frantic gunfire and shouting in a language Zarya couldn’t spare the time to place.

Close-quarter fighting was something Zarya wasn’t quite used to anymore, at least not with human-sized targets inside a hallway and not in the middle of the wilds and old villages of Siberia. But the particle cannon was especially effective in the tight space, the heat from every explosive round ruffling her hair in the blowback and the cannon humming with growing power as she quickly flipped to shield herself, the pink-purple translucent bubble giving the bullets that showered her a watery, muffled effect as she continued to plow ahead.

The one side of the hallway became windows that overlooked the work floor below. Zarya risked a look after the last target collapsed, unmoving with a swift kick to his head as he tried to pry himself off the floor.

D.Va’s mech was taking some serious damage, but she was still flying about the machines and industrial mechanics with the ease of a giant pink bird with a broken wing as it darted around a massive machine. McCree was ducked behind a crate, reloading his revolver, bullets pinging off the metal by his head before he stuck his head out in a brief pause and fired somewhere near her own level, giving time for a familiar blur of chrome and glowing green to speed across the factory floor, the cyborg’s blade cutting through several targets before sliding behind the same position McCree was in as the crack of rifles returned from the high angle.

Zarya followed the angle of fire, spotting the broken windows about one level higher than her own. Snipers, or at least people who pretended they were, using the advantage of their position to fire down upon those on the lower floors. The shattered window and glass that trailed across the floor below showed that the cyborg, who had originally been just a few levels below her, had made a sudden exit from said level- either forcibly or not.

His omnic “teacher” was nowhere in sight, but Zarya didn't spare it a second thought, her focus more on the room of enemies on the floor above her.

The path towards the stairwell was clear as Zarya made her way through the halls, her level deserted aside from the bodies she had left behind. It seemed that most of the others had either gone onto the factory floor below or up in the higher levels to rain bullets down upon the others. Disjointed too, if they seemingly ignored how some of their comrades were dead.

It would make it all the easier to sneak up on them.

Zarya kept her steps as quiet as possible, even as the sound of gunfire grew louder as she approached, following the noise on the upper corridor. Although she heard no other footsteps, Zarya paused to listen, the back of her neck prickling with something amiss behind her. She waited a heartbeat before turning around sharply, the cannon’s light glowing eagerly under her arm as she brought its muzzle into direct contact with Zenyatta’s chest with a metallic clunk.

They both froze, Zenyatta’s hands splayed out in peaceful gesture, Zarya staring the omnic down with surprise at seeing it and furious at it for sneaking up on her. She had half a thought of simply pulling the trigger and blasting the omnic away, but the thought was shoved out of her mind as soon as it came. One, it would give away her position, and two, whether she liked it or not, the omnic was a teammate.

It was another heartbeat later before Zarya pulled the cannon away from the floating piece of metal, her knuckles paling under her grip on the particle cannon.

“Snipers ahead,” was all she could say, her jaw stiff as she turned an eye down the hallway, the room just a hundred feet away, the noise of the gunfire drowning out any hint of their approach. She kept her head turned enough to keep the omnic in her peripheral vision, bringing the cannon closer to her to hide the glow of churning particles.

Shielding first before charging in would draw attention to herself, but there was the issue with the omnic. As much as she’d like to just leave it to take care of itself, she couldn’t fail her mission in protecting her teammates by letting one be decommissioned on her watch. But she couldn’t shield it, then herself, then run into the room, as the shielding didn’t last long enough to warrant that. It was to save last minute blows or harsh impacts, not quite having worked out for long term use other than a handful of seconds.

Leaving the omnic outside while she charged in also left it vulnerable to those who were going to try to escape. She figured that, again, it could take care of itself, but its exposed metal torso wasn’t exactly armor-rated, and its more humanoid shape favored dexterity, not sturdiness.

“I have an idea, if you wish to hear it.”

The sudden mechanical voice in her ear nearly caused Zarya to jerk, snapping out of her thoughts to turn both eyes to the omnic, her gaze narrowing onto it. Its gaze- or rather, its face- was pointed towards the doorway that the gunfire was echoing from before the nine lights turned towards her, the narrow slits under them devoid of life. She wasn’t sure what to look at, didn’t want to for that matter, but decided to just glare entirely at where its golden-bronze jaw met its tarnishing silver faceplate.

 “There’s a thought,” she muttered without even thinking about what she was saying, her tone stepping just beyond the border of sarcastic. An omnic with an idea- now that’s a laugh. She turned her head away, not all the way but enough to keep an eye on both the doorway down the hallway and the omnic beside her. It wasn’t quite an outright dismissal, her eyes flickering back to the omnic before keeping him within the corner of her sight.

The omnic let out a sound that almost could be mistaken for a chuckle, his legs curling as they folded in mid-air, hands resting on his knees in a near relaxed pose. The position made fury coil in Zarya’s gut, but she kept it down. They were in a fight, not some backyard meditation garden. The omnic was a fool as it was a hunk of calculated metal. Its programming must be off kilter something fierce.

“I have… an ability that will keep us both alive as you storm the room,” it began after a moment, as if considering how to word it. Briefly she wondered if it knew to keep it simple, but scrapped it immediately. “There is no other means to remove this threat other than the direct approach. All I ask is for your trust- or trust enough to get us both out of this situation intact and back to the others,” it rectified when Zarya turned her face fully to it, her face twisting into a sneer at its choice of words.

Her lips pursed together, eyeing the omnic with a critical gaze. What sort of “ability” would an omnic possess that would keep both of them alive from running head first into a room full of gunmen? Still, the sound of fire and the thought of her teammates still on the factory floor being shot at was the only thing that kept her from outright denying the omnic.

Failure was not an option.

“Fine.” Zarya turned her back fully to the omnic with a deep breath, crushing down her instinctual fear to focus on the enemy before her. Turning her back to it was the only commitment of wary, temporary trust she was going to offer the thing, even though every muscle in her being shouted with her heart to turn around again, to keep the omnic in her sights at all times.

 _Remember to keep your guard up around them at all times!_ her muscles protested, her jaw clenching as she felt the metallic fingers of the omnic curl around the gaps in her armor where her shoulders meet her arm. _They cannot be trusted! Don’t let this one near you!_

 _My team needs me more,_ she told herself sternly, gripping the particle cannon hard enough to turn her knuckles white.

 _Remember the last time you trusted-_ her heart cried with a sharp pang before she crushed it down with fury and refocused her mind on the task at hand.

_Shut up!_

Her own feelings were no part of this. Mind and heart were to be separated in battle. It was easier to detach when she wasn’t allied with an omnic, but she had no other choice.

 _Hana is down there_ , she scolded herself and her heart as she took a deep breath to steady her nerves, suddenly hyperaware of the omnic’s every shift of its joints and mechanical presence. Hana was, perhaps, the only person she had been cordial with who was present on this mission, the other being Reinhardt. The Russian cared about the young woman more than she wanted to admit, her optimism and thirst for life something that Zarya wanted to preserve.

 _She should live to see the day of a warless world_.

“I am ready,” came the soft murmur behind her, and Zarya didn’t let herself wait, cannon humming with deadly intent as she ran head first into the room, lobbing a charge ahead of her and drawing attention away from her teammates on the floor and towards herself as she roared.

A sudden lightness enveloped her, a bright glow of gold contrasting the violent hues of the lights on her armor as the cannon thrummed with energy. It was as if something warm had wrapped around her heart, making her realize for the first time how cold she really was. It made her feel _safe_ , forgetting about the omnic that was attached behind her as she flipped over to the beam setting, the charged ray of light cutting through the terrified people in the room as they screamed in fear. Some even opted to take their chances at jumping out the window as other fired upon her in fright.

Their bullets didn’t reach her, and she cut them down like a hot knife through butter.

The warm faded along with the golden glow as the last member fell in a heap of scorched flesh. Zarya _missed_ it, but only briefly as she buried it deep into the back of her mind, focusing on the mission. Apparently her cannon had cut through whatever it was that was jamming their frequency, as the comm in her ear crackled horribly. She lifted a hand to her ear, fixing the comm so it wasn’t so annoyingly close.

“Comms’ back online! Snipers are taken care of.”

“As much as I’d love to thank you-“ Tracer’s voice replied, her accent surprisingly strong with her lack of breath. “But we got bigger problems! The whole entire place is about to blow!”

There was a very loud curse from McCree, and Zarya was ready to join in, her eyes flicking back to the doorway.

“How long?!”

“Sixty seconds!”

That was followed by actual cursing from Zarya, the words a low growl in Russian as she flitted her eyes from the doorway to the window. The others were shouting something in her ear, but she ignored it, the omnic beside her trying to convey some sort of comfort to them, but she ignored that too as she reached a hand out, grabbing the omnic by the arm. A strangled sort of yelp left him as she tossed him up onto her shoulder, no longer thinking but acting entirely on the single thought that _she and her team had to get away before they were all killed_. Genji was saying something in her ear, drowning it out with her own beating heart as she took three long strides and jumped out of the window, cannon pointed at her feet.

**_“Огонь по готовности!”_ **

The surge of gravity ripped the bolts and screws out of the walls on the way down, metal sheets falling in their wake as she rode the gravital surge down with the bright, eerie glow of the cannon that lit up the lights of her armor and tinted her eyes violet in the reflection. A scrap of metal sliced up her cheek as it flew up and she fell down, but she ignored the pain and the trickle of liquid across her skin, eyes focus on the path she must take through the carnage of the factory floor.

D.Va’s mech was on its last legs, but it was still moving faster than if McCree was running on foot, the cowboy hitching a ride on its head while he picked off some of the last surviving stragglers. Genji was up ahead, continuously looking back with his head tiled up, watching the pair fall under the pull of gravity.

The surge hit the floor and lasted a second longer to keep their momentum from causing them both to continue straight through the floor before dissipating. Zarya’s feet hit the ground hauling, charging after the teammates ahead of her. The distant rumble of engines told her that Tracer was at the dropship and waiting for them just outside the blast radius, possibly confirmed by her voice in her ear.

The others were already outside, Zarya still had a ways to go.

The first rumble of explosives going off came when she was still a hundred feet from the door. She continued to run, putting all her days of morning runs with Reinhardt to shame as she bolted out, her fingers quick to flip the switch on her cannon as she pulled the teammate on her shoulder off enough to hunch over them, the violet bubble forming around them just as the shockwave of the blast hit them.

It knocked her off her feet, flying with bits of metal and debris bouncing off the shield. She tumbled across the concrete outside, stopping with a sudden jolt as she slammed into a pier. The shield broke and faded away as Zarya blinked the stars from her eyes, staring into the inferno several hundred feet away.

Her head dropped back against the cracked pier as a deep laugh vibrated through her chest, lifting her hands over her head as she let out a howl of victory, a smile breaking across her face as she forget about the omnic sprawled across her lap or the roar of the dropship behind her.

In her books, that had been a very successful mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Огонь по готовности! is Zarya's alt line. Because why not shout that while riding your alt straight down like a surfboard?
> 
> Who lets me write when I'm tired? It should be illegal. I apologize for any errors you find in this chapter.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry for such a delay! I'm trying to get back into the swing of this story. I apologize for any mistakes this chapter has.
> 
> Thank you everyone for commenting and liking this story! I hope I can continue to make content that you enjoy!

Zarya jerked herself awake as her head tipped a bit too far back with a strangled snort, blinking blearily as she tried to refocus on where she was.

Ever since her first mission, Zarya found herself unable to sleep for much longer than three hours, waking up in cold sweat and panicked breath lodged in her throat. The room always felt too small, too dark and stifling, and the pressing walls always made her get up and leave to find some sort of familiarity with the cool, damp air outside, even if it didn’t have the bite that Russia’s winds carried.

 She would find herself out on the walkways, legs hanging over the edge and arms draped over the metal railings, watching the dark waves crash against the rocks far below. The cold steel against her bare skin was a grounding, soothing presence in comparison to the stifling darkness of her own sparse quarters, and sometimes the familiarity of the chill caused her to doze back off again where she sat, alone in the early morning shadows.

Zarya was sure that the others were starting to pick up on it, especially Reinhardt, whom she met with more frequently than anyone else outside of Hana. The older warrior expressed his concern once just a few days prior after finding Zarya already in the workout room for a week straight, and having already been there for at least an hour- usually more. But Zarya couldn’t- wouldn’t- bring herself to tell him about the nightmares that had kicked up several notches since returning, the imaginative curling of metal fingers around her neck haunting her even during her waking hours.

Some nights, it was hard to pick out the differences between old memories, twisted subconscious images that her own brain turned against her, and reality. Those nights were the worst, and sometimes the shaking in her fingers wouldn’t cease until well into the morning.

And so Zarya simply gave Reinhardt a smile that didn’t reach her eyes and told him that she would be fine, and the man hadn’t brought it up again since. Yet even in her growing exhaustion, she couldn’t miss the concerned looks that he shot whenever he thought she wasn’t looking, nor the growing cases when Hana attempted to accost her and drag her into her room for hours on end- possibly in an attempt to get her to crash again among the plushie collection.

Zarya simply left her room less, give excuses as to where she needed to be to slip away from Hana’s earnest requests, or found places to let her shoulders slump and scrub her face with her hands where few ever go. More often than not she found herself hiding away in the workshop, either going unnoticed or by in large ignored by the Swedish engineer as she took to the far corner, mostly to sit and browse through her tablet, or on the more worse days, shift through some of the old crates of scrap and tools into something resembling organization until the man left and she put her hands to work tinkering on her armor in secret.

He hadn’t vocalized any complaints about her presence, and no one else came down searching for her either, and so Zarya continued to make herself at home in the solitude of the workshop.

Zarya rubbed at her eyes, her head drooping so that she could rest them on her arms, folded along the bottom rail of the protective barrier that separated her from the several hundred meter drop down the cliff below into the ocean. She had only gotten about an hour’s sleep within the last two days- any attempts of rest caused her own head to turn against her. The air outside was damp, but mild, the Mediterranean winter fading fast into spring. There was still that familiar nip against her exposed skin, enough to settle herself back into reality as she closed her eyes and let out a sigh that moved her entire body in its release.

Her eyes cracked open when the sound of the door closest to her caught her ears, odd and jarring in comparison to the waves and her own breath. She didn’t have the energy to get up and look, instead continuing to gaze out at the black waters and hope whoever it was would continue on.

Someone settled down beside her instead, an arm’s distance away to give her polite space, but enough to let her know what they weren’t leaving. But despite their presence, they said nothing, and Zarya let herself close her eyes once again. They remained that way for several minutes, neither of them moving or speaking, simply sitting in semi-comfortable silence.

A soft clink of something setting against the metal platform of the walkway between them pulled her attention from listening to the sea and turning her tired eyes downward. An odd shaped gourd sat there, the cork hanging from a string around its neck. The unfamiliar script on its side was familiar, and a quick glance farther over told her who exactly was sitting next to her.

Slowly, her arms shifted, a hand freeing from its perch on the railing to grasp at the gourd, bringing it over to her face to sniff at its contents.

“I don’t drink often,” she murmured, her words as thick and tired as her tongue was as she lifted the offering to her lips. It wasn’t as strong as some of the things she had tried before, but it was a familiar enough sensation that soothed her weary heart.

“Perhaps for the best,” came the reply from her companion, Hanzo’s voice hinting at a faint graveliness that came with him speaking quieter. He said nothing more about it, and for that, Zarya was grateful, setting the gourd back down between them in order to fold her arms over the railing again.

They fell silent again, watching the sea and dark skies slowly hint at color as early morning twilight crept closer.

“How do you trust a man who is half machine?” Zarya found herself saying, her words half muffled in her arms as she continued to look outward. It was a question that had been plaguing her since figuring out the relationship between Hanzo and Genji, and that the latter was a cyborg. From what she heard, Hanzo was the reason why Genji was as such, or at least, caused enough serious injury to believe him as dead for so long.

Yet how could someone simply trust a cyborg that it was his brother? Who knew what other programming had been done to it to make it function. Too easy to control and manipulate, to turn against another.

She hadn’t meant to ask either, breaking the rules ingrained in her for so long. Do not ask questions, do not question authority. But she was tired, so very tired, and this question slipped away from her lips before she ever gave it a second thought. It was plaguing her, much like the terrors that appeared whenever she closed her eyes. Everything _wrong_ with the world was living under the same roof as she was now, and she had to bare face and continue as if it didn’t bother her in the least.

She may be strong, but Zarya had grown weary under the constant presence of omnics and half-omnics alike.

The man said nothing for some time, the minutes ticking by with nothing but the thundering roll of waves against the rocks. Zarya almost thought she had dozed off again before the shifting of fabric alerted her that Hanzo stirred, reaching out to pick up the gourd that sat between them.

“You do not.”

Zarya cracked her eyes open, turning her head in her arms enough to peer at Hanzo as he took a swig, the gourd finding rest in his lap between relaxed fingers. He didn’t look at her, facing out at the sea below them.

“He may claim that he is my brother, but my brother died years ago. I am not convinced that he is otherwise.”

“And yet, you are here,” Zarya pointed out, her chin finding rest in the crook of her arm as she watched the archer. A flicker crossed his face, the emotion she was unable to place as Hanzo lifted the gourd to his lips.

“And yet, here I am,” he agreed, voice reverberating slightly in the container before he took another drink from it. He sounded worn, defeated, and Zarya couldn’t bring herself to pry any further.

A part of her believed she understood Hanzo’s intentions. If it had been someone of her own family, and there was that sliver of hope that they were still _alive_ in some form, she would drop everything in a heartbeat. But seeing them as a literal shell of themselves from her own memories would hurt far more than any transactions she had done to them. A shadow, a _machine_ with their face on it. It was not the same. But, then again, nothing would ever stay the same if one came back from the brink of death.

But Zarya had no one left to find. Her grandfather was dead, her town destroyed, and thus, she could never understand what Hanzo was going through, no matter how much thought she put into it.

Zarya lifted her head, arms shifting so that she could press the heels of her palms to her eyes. Thinking made her head hurt. Everything was making her head hurt, to be honest. And everything having to do with the Shimadas was far too complicated for her to even begin to comprehend at the moment.

“Hana is still awake.”

Zarya let her hands drop, blinking over at Hanzo, trying to catch up to his thought process as he sealed the gourd back up. His tone held an inflection of exasperation, not to Zarya, but perhaps, the fact that Hana was still awake at this hour, more likely than not delved deep into one of her games.

“You are programmed in her door to be let in at any time. I am sure she would not mind the company.”

She… didn’t know that she was allowed through the door at any time. Zarya had always been dragged in by Hana herself, so she never paid much attention to the door. Her own quarters were still locked to everyone unless in an emergency, not that anyone would come to her door willingly. Still, the thought of her room made her uneasy, but she knew she needed to try to get some semblance of sleep before her body forcibly did so for her. She could see what Hanzo was trying to convey, and Zarya was damned that it was working.

“I…suppose she wouldn’t,” Zarya found herself agreeing, grudgingly getting her legs to move as she pulled her feet up from their dangle over the edge of the walkway, bare toes flexing slightly as she tried to get feeling back into the numb appendages. Hanzo had risen to his feet as well, but Zarya paid no mind as she went back inside, her feet quiet against the metal floors.

She didn’t know how she managed to get to Hana’s room without falling asleep where she stood, but somehow Zarya managed, the door sliding open with a soft hiss as she blindly jabbed at the controls. Hana didn’t even seem to notice, headset over her ears and eyes glued to the screen before her. Zarya crept on by behind her, carefully shoving over a few of the plushies that dominated the bedspread in order to make a big enough hole for her to bury herself into with a great sigh of relief.

Hana said something, the chair creaking as it spun around for the girl to look, but Zarya was already long gone, curled up and fast asleep among the stuffed animals. She hadn’t noticed that Hanzo had followed her through the hallways back to Hana’s room, nor would she know about the quiet conversation between the pair once Hana had muted her mic.

Zarya merely slept on well into the afternoon, ignorant of the occasional visitors and concerned murmurings of her fellow teammates. She simply continued to sleep and dream of positively, and wonderfully _nothing._


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry about disappearing on this project for awhile. I am working on other writing projects, but I decided to at least warm back up to working on this one. Back to problematic, confused and frustrated Zarya. 
> 
> Thank you for your support and patience. If you have any questions or requests, feel free to ask me on my [tumblr.](http://regalmisfortune.tumblr.com/)

Zarya stared down at the object that was hovering a few centimeters above the floor before her, her mind going blank for a few seconds.

She had just gotten done showering from her morning exercise regimen, alone for a change as Reinhardt was preoccupied elsewhere. The night before Winston, Angela, and Tracer had gone off to who knows where on a sudden mission, and while the others may have brimmed with curiosity, Zarya didn’t bother to ask and had simply gone to bed.

While the corridors were usually quiet when she woke up, there was commonly at least _someone_ awake by the time she ventured back to her room, and even more so of a chance when she got out of the shower.

But the quick glance around her as the door to her room hissed quietly shut behind her, Zarya confirmed that the entirety of the wing she was occupying was stiflingly devoid of life other than herself and… well… whatever _this_ thing was.

It was certainly far too small to be any omnic she knew of. There was no arms or visible legs, no guns or ports for weapons. It had a head, a screen on the front of it, and flaps that grotesquely mimicked ears as the digitalized eyes on the dark screen of its- head? Face?- blinked up at her before making a computerized smile- a bit like the ones Hana tended to etch out on her notes when it wasn’t her signature rabbit face.

Zarya stared. The robot blinked back.

What was she supposed to do with this… this thing? She knew if she kicked it down the hallway, everyone would come out for her hide. Zarya would rather die if she was caught trying to talk to it, and the thought of asking Athena about it made any words she wanted to say freeze in her throat. And since Athena _wasn’t_ blaring alarms at intruders, this little robot was here for a reason and didn’t pose a threat… yet.

So with hair still damp from her shower, Zarya did the only thing she could rationally do while in the base: she ignored it. Walked around the strange thing and continued to pursue her original goal of finding the kitchen.

The plan would’ve worked perfectly- if the robot hadn’t chirp quietly and buzzed after her like some sort of lost mechanical puppy.

Zarya stopped mid-step. The robot stopped too, still keeping about a meter or so distance from her. When she resumed, it hovered after her once more, even creeping closer towards her as its eyes blinked innocently.

Zarya gritted her teeth, the urge to pick it up and throw it as far away from her simmering in her gut, but she didn’t change her pace or stopped again. She couldn’t show hesitance in front of an omnic, no matter how small it was and how cute it was it was designed.

Her footsteps only slowed when she approached the kitchen, hearing a multitude of voices from far down the hallway. It sounded like almost everyone was in the room, their tones happy and laced with laughter. It made her stop completely, if only because the tiny robot chirped and zoomed past her down the rest of the hallway and into the room.

“Snowball! There you are!”

The voice was that of a woman, but Zarya didn’t recognize it. A new teammate, most likely, and Zarya felt herself back up enough to duck behind the next juncture, her back to the wall just in time, as it sounded like someone poked their head out into the hallway.

“Hello?” came the uncertain call from the unfamiliar woman, before her voice was slightly muffled as she pulled her head back into the kitchen. “There’s no one out there.”

“It’s probably Hanzo!” Hana’s voice was loud even at this distance- Zarya could even hear the cheeky grin. “He doesn’t like big crowds, but he’ll turn up!”

As the happy chatter of the rest of the team became white noise to Zarya’s ears, Zarya suppressed a small sigh as she pushed away from the wall and began to make the trek back to her own room, no longer feeling as hungry as she had been just a few minutes before.

Well, at least she was no longer the new person on base. That had to count for something.

In the week that followed, Zarya learned a little about the newest resident from Hana and Reinhardt. Her name was Mei, she was a researcher who had been stuck in Antarctica for the past decade in cryostasis, and she was Chinese. That was as much that Zarya could figure out in the random ramblings that both of her teammates tended to go on while between reps or matches respectfully. It still didn’t explain why she had a tiny robot on her, and Zarya knew better than to ask. It would only confirm that she had seen it- this… ‘Snowball’.

And despite Hana’s best efforts (occasionally with the help of Hanzo of all people), Zarya managed to avoid all interactions and sightings of Mei.

“You’re as bad as Hanzo,” Hana snipped one evening, and Zarya felt her lips press into a thin line.

“I have no interest in meeting a scientist,” she had shot back. The “ _Especially ones who walks around with a robot”_ remained unsaid, but she ignored the look Hana shot her as Zarya up and left the smaller woman’s bedroom in favor to sulk in solitude.

She was a soldier- she wasn’t here to make friends.

After that, Zarya tried to avoid Hana as well. Reinhardt kept giving her concerned glances when he thought she wasn’t looking.

“My friend, are you feeling well?” he asked one morning, unable to stop himself.

“Well as any other, old man,” she replied, giving him a half-hearted punch to the shoulder. “Worry about yourself.”

In truth, Zarya hadn’t been sleeping again. She had closed herself off to everyone else, and while it favored her duties of a soldier of Russia first and foremost, Zarya was still human and longed for some sort of connection between the people around her. But it was hard, with her own obligations towards her country. She couldn’t let her guard down around people who accepted omnics and let them mull around the base like they were normal people. In turn, keeping everyone at arm’s length hurt, her need to protect them from a slow growing sense of attachment curdling something sour in her stomach and plaguing her nightmares.

Perhaps it was because everyone was so genuinely _likeable_ in their own, strange way that made it all the more harder for Zarya to stick to her principles ground into her since she was a child.

Zarya found herself in the workshop late one night, unable to sleep and in desperate need to keep her hands busy so her head wouldn’t be. Most of the lights were dim low, letting the glow from her particle cannon light her workspace as she made adjustments to her armor. Torbjörn did fine work, but she needed her own touches to make it feel perfect.

She was elbow deep in her work when something bumped into her knee. The entire table jolted with a heavy thump, rattling tools and some falling to the floor in a clatter of metal as her leg acted on its own in surprise by ramming hard into the underside of the workbench.

Something small shot out away from her as a plethora of Russian curses left her mouth, pulling her hands out from the interior of her armor without wrecking anything further. It ran and hid behind someone who had just walked into the workshop, who gasped.

“Snowball! You shouldn’t scare people!” the woman admonished as Zarya looked up from rubbing her knee to see the tiny robot make a small sad face on its screen.

The woman was short, shorter than even Tracer. She had a round face with chubby cheeks and thick glasses on her small nose. She was also wearing slippers that looked suspiciously like they came from Hana. She looked as if she had decided she couldn’t sleep as well and rolled out of bed to do something, but the tiny floating robot had other plans.

This had to be Mei, Zarya realized as the woman turned her face from scolding the robot to smiling apologetically at her.

“I am so sorry! Snowball really likes new people. New data to collect!”

Zarya simply stared at her.

“I don’t think we’ve met before! I’m Mei!” the officially identified Mei pressed on, unperturbed. “You must be Miss Zaryanova I’ve been hearing about! I’ve met everyone else!”

“Zarya is… fine…” Zarya managed to say, giving both Mei and ‘Snowball’ a sideways glance before she bent down to pick up the fallen tools. Torbjörn would be pissed come morning if she left the workshop a mess.

“Oh! Let me help!”

A pair of smaller hands joined Zarya’s in picking up the items scattered about the floor. The tiny robot circled around them, low to the floor as it pushed some tools that had rolled farther away closer to them to collect. Zarya gave the thing a sharp look, her nose wrinkling a little.

“Why a robot?”

The words left Zarya’s lips before she even considered it, the question laced with a low growl of hostility. It surprised both of them, Mei’s head snapping up to stare at Zarya with wide brown eyes.

“Snowball’s a friend!” she answered. “And a scientific drone, not just a robot.”

“A robot’s a robot.” Zarya couldn’t help but be curt, setting the tools in the corresponding order before shutting a panel on her armor before hoisting it up to set it back where she found it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mei’s face was contorted in a confused sort of hurt, Snowball blinking out from around her arm.

“It means,” Zarya retorted, her accent thick in her throat as she walked past Mei and her robot to grab her cannon, the light glowing brighter in its center as her fingers wrapped around its handles. “That you are a fool.” The cannon hit its shelf a little harder than necessary, anger and frustration thrumming through her heart. “Everyone here are blind, hopeless _fools_. Thinking omnics and robots are _friends_.”

She spat the words out like acid, her temper getting the better of her. She could repress and suppress, but after the weeks of her being here, all her anger and frustration of this entire situation had to bubble out.

“Those _things_ are tools of destruction. Weapons. They are dangerous, backstabbing traitors waiting for you to let your guard down.”

She turned to face Mei again, staring back into the brown eyes that were impossibly wide behind her glasses.

“I am not here to make friends. I am here on orders. And the sooner you _idiots_ realize this, the better.”

With that, Zarya stormed out of the workroom, her nails digging into the palms of her hands. She couldn’t go back to her room in this state, with blood pounding in her ears and fury in her veins. She would make a mess of her room and most definitely wake everyone up by her release of aggression.

With what little control she had left, Zarya made her way to the training room. Mats littered the dark space, obviously being neglected by whoever used the room last. Zarya growled as she kicked a stack over and punched one of the padded walls. Hard.

“ _Stupid_ ,” she hissed to herself in her native tongue, muscles coiling as she thumped the wall yet again with her fist, the padding denting under the force.

Everyone in Overwatch was naïve. They didn’t understand, didn’t _want_ to understand, that omnics, robots, _all of it_ \- they would kill everyone if they gave them the chance. They tore the entirety of Siberia apart- destroyed countries, _continents_ , and yet here she was, stuck in a place full of sympathetic, hopeless _morons_ or people who simply stood and did _nothing_.

Zarya’s forehead crashed into the padded wall, breathing sharply through her nose as she tug her fingers into the protective meshing, not caring if she tore it. This was for the best, she mentally scolded herself. If they eventually knew where she stood, then they would leave her be and stop confusing her with their niceties and open friendliness. She had a job to do, and doing missions for Overwatch did not mean being friends with them.

But she hadn’t meant for everything to come out on Mei. Maybe someone else would’ve been better, but Mei was new. She knew only the few things the others had told her about herself, and Zarya knew that there wasn’t much to tell.

The damage was already done, Zarya simply had to live with the consequences. Or, at least she hoped, a brief notion far in the hollowness that was left behind as the anger ebbed away, that it would be as simple as she told herself it would be.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, thank you for the support so far! 
> 
> As of right now, I am debating of ending this story relatively soon (as in at least within the next chapter or two). I may extend it to a sequel in the future, but as of right now I wish to at least bring this part of the story to a conclusion and aim towards other works and ideas. I didn't want to leave this work hanging incomplete, so I will at least cover what I want to disclose before wrapping it all up. 
> 
> Again, I thank you for your support on this work. I do take requests and questions on my [tumblr](http://regalmisfortune.tumblr.com/) which also has a ko-fi link if you ever feel the need to do so.

The avoidance only lasted three days. Three relatively peaceful days that Zarya spent most of in her room working out, reading articles, or attempting to sleep which typically ended in her growing frustrated and doing pushups until her arms gave out on her. She abused Athena’s use to avoid any confrontation in the halls while she snuck out to get herself some food- a quick grab-and-go of whatever leftovers there were in the fridge or throwing together a sandwich, as it was the easiest and quickest thing she could make and take with her without too much prep-work.

_“Agent Zarya, Winston is requesting your presence in Meeting Room I-2,”_ Athena’s voice cut through the mental counting down of the seconds in Zarya’s head during her secluded workout. A grunt was her response as she unfurled herself from her reps and ran the back of her hand across her temple.

“I will be there as soon as I can,” Zarya told the AI, reaching out to grab a towel.

“ _Winston claims that it is very urgent.”_

That meant no time to shower, then. Zarya sighed, draping the towel across her shoulders. It didn’t quite sound like a mission, but then again, it could be anything. But she couldn’t dawdled while her orders were given, so bare-footed and smelling like sweat it was as she followed the mental map towards the corresponding meeting room. She was sure she remembered seeing the number on one of the many empty spaces.

Yet as she got closer to her destination, Zarya had a sinking suspicion that something was amiss. The hallways were oddly quiet- perhaps because it was a group meeting, but there was no obvious carry of voices down the hallway like it should have, nor were there any late stragglers or early attendees.

Room I-2 was the second door to the left, the only door on the floor that was ajar. The others were shut, most likely unused as was much of this part of the base. Why use this room in particular was beyond Zarya, when the usual room used for mission debriefings was closer towards the commons. Still, she knocked on the metal before pushing it open further, these doors not automated by Athena.

The interior of the room was… a bit like an interrogation room, if Zarya was honest with herself. The smooth glass panels on the walls were dark, and she wanted to say that they were screens, but with Winston occupying the other side of the table with a face that would mirror exactly like the one time Zarya was forced to speak to the principle after starting a fight during her teenage years if said principle had been a gorilla with glasses, she was more inclined to that this was definitely going to be an interrogation.

“Sir,” she greeted, her eyes flitting about the room even while her knuckles went white on the door handle. There was no one else in the room, just them.

“Zarya,” Winston replied back, and while his face expressed a softening, his tone remained stern. “Please, sit.”

Zarya did what she was told, the door shutting softly behind her as she carefully sat in the uncomfortable metal chair that remained on the other side of the table.

“Zarya,” Winston began. “Do you know why you’re here?”

At that she paused, feeling the slightest of furrows creasing her brows together. Did he mean about the meeting itself, or did he mean about her presence on the highly-illegal team of self-proclaimed heroes.

The silence prolonged a tad far into territory that made it awkward, and Winston cleared his throat to press onward. “Your behavior since you arrived here has been… concerning. Especially more so in recent weeks.”

At this Zarya had to fold her hands in her lap to keep from flexing her fingers, swallowing a lump that was trying to form in her throat. “I had… not meant to lose my anger on Dr. Zhou.” And that was the truth. She had been incredibly short tempered in the past few weeks, frustrated at everyone but not wanting to express it. Blowing up at the short scientist was a regret, a misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time with accidental fuel brought on by the tiny drone she doted on like a strange hovering pet. Zarya regretted who she yelled at, but not about the words she said. It was nothing but the truth.

“Much like you hadn’t meant to get angry at Hana, or punched a sizeable dent into two walls, both of which are directly caused by you facing anything that appears to be an omnic.” The chair that the gorilla was sitting in creaked something dangerous as he settled back, gazing over the rims of his glasses to look at her with what she could only describe as concerned disappointment. “You use Athena to avoid people, and the only times you seem to get any decent sleep is in Hana’s room rather than your own but spend more nights in the workshop than you ever do in your own bed. It has only gotten worse in the last two weeks.”

“It will not affect my work on the field,” Zarya felt the need to argue this case, digging her thumbnail into the back of her hand. “I do not let my personal issues blind me when my team depends on me.”

“That is clear in your first mission. You did fine work with Zenyatta despite your differences,” Winston admitted, pulling the spectacles off his nose with a rumbling sigh. “But Zarya, the team extends to outside of missions as well. And everyone on this base has brought their concerns for your _wellbeing_ up to me, especially now when you are lashing out. Angela even wants to ground you- no missions- until this is settled. But because you avoid everyone and speaking about yourself, we do not know what is going on in order to help you.”

“I do not see how my personal problems should be of anyone’s concern,” Zarya bit back, unable to keep the anger from lacing her words as she spoke. She couldn’t prove Winston right in her inability to keep her cool, but with the lack of sleep on top of this… this _intervention_ , her already short temper was burning shorter by the syllable. “I do what I am told. I do my job on the field. That should be enough. Why should they care now about my actions in the base? Does not the elder Shimada do the same in avoiding others? Does not Angela stay up at all hours doing who knows what? McCree drinks when he thinks no one is looking, Hana spends more time in front of a screen than not, so why does my actions bring concern while everyone else carries on with theirs?”

“We are trying to help-“

Winston was cut off as Zarya slammed her hands against the table, the sharp bang of metal ringing in the mostly empty space.

“If _anyone_ wanted to help,” Zarya hissed through her teeth, fury etching across her face as she stared the gorilla down, not caring that he was her superior, or that she was proving everyone right by how far she was letting her emotions control her. “Then they are _late_. By twenty years.”

She couldn’t stay in the room for a second longer. The chair she had been sitting in was knocked over as she got to her feet and wrenched the door open, the rattling in its hinges as she shut it with all the force she could put into the action only fractionally satisfying as she stormed down the halls. She couldn’t go back to her room, couldn’t make it that far as she forced herself into the most unused room she could find in the farthest reaches of the base, the door barely sliding open before her hands took hold of the stacked chairs and tables that occupied the place.

Zarya’s anger only began to subside when there was nothing left to throw, dust and dirt from years of disuse covered her hands and face and shimmered in the air as particles drifted through the faint light. She stood in the midst of the destruction of furniture, chest heaving and hands clenching and unclenching as she tried to clear her head and remember what she was doing. Slowly it sank in, the fury that once boiled in her veins dissipating and leaving behind horror at how far she had let herself be taken away by her emotions.

Zarya found her knees dipping towards the floor, kneeling in the midst of the chaos she had wrought by her own two hands.

“ _I am just like my father,”_ she breathed out in her native tongue, reaching up to touch her face in terrified disbelief. The very thought made her stomach churn, even if the memories of the man she barely knew were brief at best.

Oh God- maybe she really _did_ need help.

“Athena?” her words were very soft, almost too small for a woman of her size.

“ _Yes, Agent Zarya?”_ Athena answered regardless, its own voice quieter than it could be, almost _human_.

“Is Winston still in I-2?”

“ _He is currently in the common room, speaking to the other Agents. Do you want me to notify them that you are coming?”_

“No, I… no. …Thank you.”

She knew, without a doubt, what the topic of conversation was that was being held without her. It was most likely for the best that she got this over with when everyone was present. It made her nervous and uneasy, having to face her problems instead of burying them. She didn’t readily _trust_ people, especially those who trusted omnics, but… she was here in Overwatch indefinitely. She never really had anyone who stuck around long enough to open up to, not since she was eight.

Perhaps twenty years was too long of a time to fix anything, but she had to try, at least. For her grandfather’s sake, for her team’s sake, and, just maybe, for her own sake.

Because if there was one thing that Zarya was absolutely sure on, it was that she would rather be six feet in topsoil than be _anything_ like the man who dared to be her father, and she was barely clinging onto grass roots right now.

The walk was silent other than the soft pat of her bare feet on the cool metal floors, every step bringing more and more doubt and worry. Her fingers traced across her forearm, following the patterns of the thick, blocky tattoo that was etched across her skin in bold, dark color. Her trainer back during her weightlifting days would’ve told her that suppressing her emotions until the match was for the best, using all that energy to push herself farther. But Overwatch didn’t follow the rules she was used to abiding by, the people far too strange and different and yet cohabiting together in relative comfort despite their differences. The only person who hadn’t seem to find their niche yet in this odd network was herself, and she seemed to be the only one who kept disturbing the peace.

She could hear the soft murmuring of voices as she turned into the main hallways, the others’ voices quiet despite the room being unbarred by a door to muffle the sound. Zarya took a deep breath to calm herself, or try to at least before she hesitantly stepped into the shadow of the doorframe and knocked gently onto the metal to announce her presence.

The well-used, but comfortable furniture were occupied by the other members of the team, and the ones who didn’t fit simply sat on McCree’s lap (Hana) or simply stood in the corner (Hanzo). Their eyes turned towards her, but Zarya didn’t see their expressions, instead her own gaze fixing onto Tracer who stood in the middle of the room as if she had just come in merely seconds before Zarya had, her eyes widening in surprise as  they caught sight of Zarya who was staring at what she was holding.

There, sitting innocently in Tracer’s arms, was the familiar weathered and worn leather case of her grandfather’s balalaika.


	12. Chapter 12

Zarya felt as if she had jumped into a river in the middle of a Siberian winter. She stared, shell-shocked at the instrument case in Tracer’s arms, opening her mouth wordlessly.

Tracer’s eyes grew incredibly wide, her grip tightening around the case as she began to speak as fast as she could run.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to keep this from you! You forgot it when you got your other things and you hurried off without taking this and I was going to give it to you but I forgot, I’m so so sorry!”

Unable to find her voice, Zarya didn’t notice how tense a few of the others became when her arms moved, her hands splayed upward in a silent, reaching gesture. Tracer seemed to understand, as she quickly hurried over and passed over the case to the much larger woman, still spouting out apologies and excuses.

Zarya didn’t hear any of it, her own arm curling around the case, the old smell of ancient leather pungent in her nose as her cheek pressed against the cool side. She didn’t know what to feel, still in a state of disbelief and upheaval like the whole world had turned upside down in an instant.

“Zarya?”

It was then that she realized how Tracer had stopped talking, how everyone was looking at her as she stood frozen and clutching the case to her chest as if it would disappear if she let go. Hana was beside Tracer now, both brave and foolish enough to touch her forearm and pull her out of her own head.

“It was my grandfather’s,” she blurted out softly. Hana stared at her for a second before her grip tightened on her arm and guided Zarya over to the couch. Zarya didn’t notice nor cared that the seat made available to her was between McCree and Zenyatta, Genji perched on the arm beside his omnic master. She just sat down heavily in a daze, staring though a spot on the floor. “I did not think I would… see it. Again.”

She took a shaky breath, the words falling from her lips before she could stop herself. The years of hurt and heartache piling up so high, it was time to watch it fall down.

“He used to play for me when I woke up with nightmares. Sit me on his knee and let his fingers tell the tales of old. Think he regretted not taking me away from my father sooner, or letting his daughter be alluded by her husband’s charm. He was a drunk. A… aggressive, angry shrew of a man. Mama died, I became a Zaryanova, and my father disappeared from his job building weapons and no one has seen him since. I was… three or four. Small. I do not remember much, but I sometimes find old articles about his work. Perhaps I am becoming too much like him now…”

Her father had been a brilliant man, that even after all this time a lot of his work was still being developed and tweaked by Volskaya Industries. But brilliant men aren’t always good men, and from old HR reports that Katya had let herself be privy to, he had been a cruel man behind closed doors no matter where he was.

“He used to show me how to play. My hands were too small and his were so big, but he was always so warm and kind and he was proud when I could play the basic chords. He used to play for the townsfolk too, he had a deep voice and everyone loved him. He was so… so kind. He was… a bit like you, in a way, Reinhardt.”

She couldn’t get herself to lift her eyes up to look at the giant, her fingers making the old leather creak under her grasp as she continued to stare at the floor, bitterness rising up in her throat.

“But he was too trusting. We were a small village, thought we were unbothered by the Crisis going on around us. Too far north, too cold and middle of no-where for robots bother with. But… grandfather had a worker. An omnic. He hid it in our home, let it work around the house for shelter. It came travelling in, you see, and he couldn’t let it be outside in the dead of winter. Sol, he called it. I don’t remember its actual numbers, but, Sol was different than the omnics I saw in holovids. Not big war machines with guns. Sol was… fragile.”

She could still see its hands whenever she closed her eyes. The long, metal and careful wires of flexible digits, the workings of its arms exposed from lost plating. It was always getting something stuck inside its circuitry, and she could still see clear as day behind her eyelids of her grandfather kindly sitting the thing down to pull out whatever stray thread of wool or metal clip had fallen and gotten tangled inside its wiring.  

“Sol was a friend,” she whispered to the leather. “Used to brush my hair. Could make some delicious gingerbread. But…”

Zarya swallowed thickly, but yet she couldn’t get herself from stop talking as she laid herself bare in front of everyone about her past, her nightmares.

“Sol lied. It was cold Siberian winter night, and it went into grandfather’s room with some weapon and shot him cold while he slept. I woke up at the noise, but, it met me in the hallway and…”

She traced her fingers over the scar across her temple.

“It said it was sorry,” she managed to hiss out, not angry but more bitter at the memory of it. “And then I woke up to the entire village in flames and omnics crawling all over the place and I… I ran. Five kilometers in the snow. I could barely see, it was so cold… And by the time I ran into human operatives who were coming to investigate, it was too late.”

A hollow laugh bubbled out of her throat before she could help it, scrubbing at the side of her face with the heel of her palm to chase some tears that snuck out from the corners of her eyes. “I was eight, and I ended up being the sole survivor of a village of only a hundred and seven occupants. And they had to put me under to dig some scrap out of my head and fix my eye to make sure it wouldn’t be officially damaged and then it turned out they were going to give me to my father but they found out quite quickly that he had disappeared that very night and so I ended up being tossed into the system, bumped around from family to family even after the war ended. I wasn’t strong enough to save anyone. Not my grandfather, not my village, not myself.”

Her words trailed off then, taking a moment to try to collect herself. Try was the key word, as Zarya’s face scrunched up in bitter angriness at herself.

“Sorry,” she muttered, scrubbing at her face some more with both hands, the balalaika case resting in her lap. “It’s stupid. This whole thing is stupid. It was twenty years ago and I’m still fucking tied up by it.”

It made her weak, her words implied. She had spent years stifling it, trying to ignore the fact and maybe that if she pretended it didn’t bother her, that none of this happened, it would go away on its own. But she couldn’t outride it, not between the nightmares, everyday situations that made her remember far too much. She may be physically stronger to protect everyone else, but in the end, she couldn’t even protect herself.

Something smooth yet warm wrapped around her wrist, gently lowering her hand from her face enough to press something round into her hand. Warmth tickled through the palm of her hand and up her arm, a familiar, calm presence that had her opening her eyes to look down at it.

In her grasp was one of Zenyatta’s orbs, a strange, soft golden glow tickling across her fingers as she held it.

“It’s all right,” the omnic stated quietly, and that was all Zarya needed to bury her face into her free hand and cry for what she had lost for the first time since the incident all those years ago. She felt McCree shift beside her to move the balalaika off her lap as someone else moved, large arms of the only person taller than her wrapping around her shoulders and lifting her up off the couch.

It wasn’t awkward, being settled into Reinhardt’s lap as he took over her seat, holding onto her and muttering something in German in her ear. It was nice, even, being consoled like this, even if it only made her shoulders shake and her sobs audible in her throat.

Her admittance of her problems did help quite a bit. Well, perhaps not quite, but it did lead to the team understanding her why she acted the way she had been. Angela did give her a month off from missions in order for her to work out a bit more of her emotional issues and trauma in a more pleasant, gradual environment, but talking to Zenyatta was something she was still not comfortable with. At least Hana or Reinhardt were willing to join her, Angela occasionally while they worked things out. They mostly worked on mastering her anger and showing more emotions instead of suppressing them, but even a month wasn’t enough to make her move away from years of self-neglect.

For the most part, it was a slow, tedious process, but yet nothing could be cured within a day, a week, or even a month. She still lost control of her anger, she still snapped at the omnics and Genji whenever she was having a bad day, but she was trying on her own as well- like shoving a packet of flower seeds in Bastion’s direction before turning heel and briskly heading back inside from the omnic’s little garden.

Hanzo also helped, even if Zarya didn’t particularly liked tea she drank it all the same and shared the relative peace with the archer. He had his own problems to work on, but they didn’t talk about such things during their little tea-meetings up on the roof or on one of the mostly unused walkways that wrapped around the facility, making quiet comments about the others as they watched them train in the space below them. Hanzo had quite a snarky streak, Zarya came to realize, and they would poke fun at the others in good nature over steaming cups of bitter teas.

She even got to apologizing to Mei, the small scientist lighting up like a child being told Christmas had come early. Zarya hadn’t apologized to Snowball yet, but she at least wasn’t swallowing down the urge to kick the thing across the room anymore, so there was that. The two of them occasionally found themselves in the workshop, no longer in the middle of the night and out in the open where anyone to come to see Zarya bent over her particle cannon or armor, trying to hide a smile as Mei chatted happily to herself and to Zarya as she worked on her own strange ice-making device. Torbjörn complained that the workshop was far too noisy now, but there was no bite to his words.

The most helpful thing in Zarya’s mind was when McCree shuffled from foot to foot one evening before leading her back to his room, surprisingly clean for a man of his scruffy nature, and showed her his own instrument- an acoustic guitar.

“G- Reyes gave it to me,” he explained in a mumbled drawl. “Before Overwatch fell.”

Since then they would show up at each other’s door, instrument in hand after waking up from a nightmare or their past haunting them, and together they would pluck at the strings of their designated instrument and hum soft songs in hopes not to disturb any of the others who were trying to sleep.

It was still a long process, but Zarya knew it wouldn’t be easy or short. It was another extension of training, she realized one night as she twirled the feather that Bastion had given her so long ago between her fingers as she laid on the bed, arm outstretch. While she was physically strong enough to protect everyone, she was working on becoming emotionally and mentally strong too. And she wasn’t alone anymore, lost in a sea of faces. She had people who depended on her, and whom she depended on in turn, teammates and friends alike.

She never really had close friends before, but the thought made Zarya smile, letting the feather drop from her fingers to drift down to her chest, her heart light and warm for the first time since she had been eight.

Her grandfather would’ve been proud of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this story! 
> 
> If you have any questions or requests, feel free to ask me on my [tumblr!](http://regalmisfortune.tumblr.com/)


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